


The World at the Tip of my Fingers

by SlaveToGravity



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Canon Universe, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, On Hiatus, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, There's a dead horse, Violet Evergarden AU, also, alternative ending, heavily inspired by, just because, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2020-10-10 15:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlaveToGravity/pseuds/SlaveToGravity
Summary: With no flesh left to cut, no blood left to spill and no titan left to slaughter, the last soldiers went their separate ways. To the ocean, to the unknown, to the peace of inner cities, to the colonies now settled outside, everyone left and created a new life, one of prosperity, freedom and security.But Mikasa only knows death, the adrenaline of a fight and the endorphin of a wound, and with nothing else to massacre, she doesn’t know what to do, what life to lead. So she wanders and wonders, running away from the populated cities, hiding deep into the woods she knows, taller than the biggest titans, trees smelling of blood and desolated corpses. There, the sun wakes but doesn’t shine past the heavy leaves. There, it’s the memories of past defeats that haunt her, but she stays. It’s familiar, it’s the known and the constant. There, she remains and there, she wants to end.“If you want to rot here like garbage, that’s fine with me. But if you want to do something with your pathetic life then move your ass Ackerman, because I have a job for you.”But captain Levi doesn’t let her waste her life away like she would have liked to, he has other plans for her and oh, how they seem tempting from deep in the woods.





	1. Les mémoires d’un être de chaire

**Author's Note:**

> Warning : Titles are gonna be french puns, because I have the power to do so.

The sun has awaken a long time ago, she guesses, judging by the way leaves ruffle and shadows dance, stains of orange light covering the grassy ground. It might be early in the morning still, her horse still sleeps on the porch, head on the wooden railing. It doesn’t hold much, the wood creaks and faded paint falls in scales, but the horse finds it comfortable, always laying its brown head on it. Since she doesn’t move much anymore, having stored enough food and water for a month, maybe more if she keeps on jumping meals, the horse stays limp most of the days, moving around for an hour or two before settling back against the railing. She guesses that the horse will rot away with her. She had wondered for a while if it would survive the next snow, but seeing how the horse already tilts at each breeze, only skin on bones, she didn’t have to wonder for much. It has lost its muscles and the strength that made it a horse and now, only a shell of its past self, glories of war and fights won long gone, the horse will die soon, retired from the action, far and deep into the forest of tall trees, where so many of its comrades died for the war. She doesn’t go and salute it anymore, just witnesses its slow decay, a mirror of her own self.

She decays too, mind first, waiting for her body to do the same. She has kept it well-built and balance for too long, and it will take time before it finally follows her mind. Skipping meals doesn’t do much, it just lets the meat she killed rot inside pots full of salt. She had hunted the beasts down with the fiery of a soldier only for each and every prey to be killed too fast and too easily. The adrenaline it had procured had only been short-lived and in the end, she hadn’t felt the desire to eat anymore. If Sasha were to be there, she would have eaten the meat only to see her pout, but Sasha isn’t there anymore, Sasha isn’t alive, and Sasha won’t ever come back.

The sun is full, she guesses, judging by the awakening of the horse and the shadows being fully drawn on the ground, the wind being stronger, the leaves falling faster, plummeting on the shadows they draw. Elbows against the window and head in her palms, Mikasa only watches as time flies by, slowly enough for her to think, slowly enough for her to count the hours with an accuracy she didn’t have before, for during the war counting the hours meant having the time to do so, and soldiers didn’t have the time to count, didn’t have the time to watch the hours fly by, didn’t have the time to breathe and to live the idle life she leads now. Never was it annoying, never was it boring, never was it only the leaves falling and the horse dying. Now it only is that, and Mikasa hates the life of passivity she had created for herself. But she doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know where to go, for she has never created a dream she desired so much to fulfill. Armin had, and for most of his youth, it was only the dream of seeing the ocean and the worlds beyond it that had carried him throughout the war against greater beings. Eren had followed, freed from his crimes, freed from his rage, having fulfilled his revenge, making Armin’s dream his own. Jean had stayed back in the inner cities of the wall, finding peace in a wife he truly deserved and a child he had longed for. Connie had left the graveyard last, leaving Sasha behind, grief finally done, and it’s with the dream of counting his tales that he left to wander beyond the walls, settling his own colony, naming it after his dead mother. Historia had remained the queen, leading the country with the courage and confidence of the woman became, longing for the love of Ymir but settling for her duties instead. For the rest of them, it is unsure what they became, and Mikasa imagines their new lives, ones of peace and quiet with no threat to slay. She could have followed any of them, they all had asked her to, but those weren’t her dreams, so she had politely declined before leaving quietly in the dead of night, brown warhorse by her side, without a farewell. She was never good with words, silence always suited her better.

The horse tilts, she sees past the dusty window. It tilts and it tilts against the wind until it finally falls. Its tired cry should be enough to shake her awake, out of her thoughts, but she only watches the animal as it cannot stand up. Leaves fall on its brown fur, the light casts fully on the pathetic beast, and she slowly witnesses as it begins to give up. Hours pass by, the horse stays lying on the ground, not dead yet not alive, and as the sun sets, she guesses, for the shadows become blurry and the leaves begin to settle, the horse doesn’t breathe anymore, doesn’t move, doesn’t beg. Memories of frightful fights become foggy, her strong silhouette leading the horse into battle. As it dies so does her past life, leaving her alone now, without the ghost of a company that was her horse. She had never named it, never planned on it, calling it a horse, simply, by fear of getting attached to the animal. Now, as it lays frail and dead on the ground, right on her porch, she doesn’t feel sadness, doesn’t feel compassion. She doesn’t feel anything, and maybe any kind of feeling would have been better than this. She misses the fight, misses the action, but she doesn’t miss her horse, loyal companion, nor does she miss her comrades, all gone to live better lives. Their tales would be told, but never hers, and she believes it is for the better. The life she led wasn’t one she was proud of, only one she was accustomed to, and one she greatly misses now that it is gone.

She blinks, all source of light has faded. Another day has passed by without her in it. She sighs and stands up, moving from the window to the bedroom. It isn’t far, the cabin being quite small, sole building in the whole woods. She had built it piece by piece, cutting the wood on her own, the horse carrying it with her. She had built the foundation, had made the walls stand, had placed the windows, the curtains she never closed, had decided of the rooms, of the colors, of the pieces of furniture. All made out of dark wood, all engraved by her own hands. She even had embroidered the tablecloths, the sheets, the decorations on the walls, ever her clothes, just like her mother had told her. The clothes were thin and quite useless in the winter, giving her another reason to not go out anymore and stay in her cabin, cut out from the rest of the world never to see the sun directly, only its light being cast through the leaves and the branches.

She enters the bedroom and, without undressing, she slips under the thin sheets and rests. Sleep never came easily and now that she doesn’t exercise or work during the day, the night stays restless and unmoving, without an eye being closed or a snore being heard. With not a soul by her side she lays silent, head facing the tangible ceiling, listening to the creaks of the wood and the sounds of the forest. She wonders in her false rest if a tree as big as big as the tallest of titans will fall on the weak roof one day, breaking through the roof bridge, the chimney, even the gutters she tried to recreate by sheer memory. The trunk would puncture the hardwood, crush the pieces of furniture she put her heart and soul into, trying her best to mimic the ones she had back in the woods behind the walls, warm days of innocent childhood. It would crush her, too, and maybe, finally, she would have the amount of endorphin and adrenaline she desperately needs to feel back alive. There, silent in the too vast bed, it downs on her every single night how pain and action were her only fuel, the only kind she truly needed. Now that nothing is done, now that her days aren’t at risk anymore, she doesn’t have anything to fuel her. Not a loving family, not the companionship of a friend, and the last companion she had just died in front of her eyes, old animal, carcass of a past she cannot forget.

So, with her thoughts running wild, with her past haunting her, mocking the idle life she lives now, alone in the tall woods, she awaits for the day to wake again, for the sun to rise through the leaves and the branches. She lays silent, thin embroidery covering her dressed body, her fingers siding against the familiar scar she had done herself on her wrist. If her mother were to be there, alive and well, old and gray, she would surely push her to a different kind of life, a better one, where she would overwork herself everyday, forcing her to finally find a restful and dreamless sleep. If Eren and Armin were to be there, back from their lifelong trip, they would surely bore her to sleep with the many tales they would tell, describing from vivid memory the landscapes, the frozen lakes, the desert of sand, the mountains of steel, the horizons made of cottons. She would listen carefully, never really understanding their fascination, not being able to comprehend or see the lands they traveled to, but she would listen anyway, closing her eyes as their words would fade. She would sleep, contempt with just being by her side. But at the same time, if her mother were there, if her friends were there, if anyone she knew were to be right there, in this pathetic excuse of a cabin she built, she would be leading a life that wasn’t hers, and she wouldn’t feel right, wouldn’t feel like herself. She just doesn’t know what kind of life suits her, she who knows violence and unfairness. So she lays awake and waits, imagining but never living, a foreign life that could have been.

It’s morning now, she guesses, judging by the light casting through the embroidery of the curtains. She pushes the thin sheets away, undresses and dresses again in embroidered clothes, she walks to the kitchen, drinks a glass of water, puts her elbows on the window frame, puts her head in the hollow of her palms, and watches as the light moves. The horse had been eaten during the night, traces of sharp teeth and jaws in his dry flesh. This time, it’s clearly dead. She doesn’t go to move the carcass from her porch, doesn’t go to clean the blood that has flowed down the woods between the cracks, just watches the unmoving body, the light, the falling leaves. Her tired eyes drift to the hidden sky, and she guesses the weather to be cold, the leaves having frozen overnight. Orange and red and purple and yellow, winter begins to settle, the first snow will fall soon, and it will once again cover the roof, cover the walls, cover the porch, this time finally covering the dead body that lays on her grounds. The wolves will come back tonight to eat the rest of it, and only bones will remain. She sighs. She doesn’t move. She closes her eyes. For a long time, she only hears. She hears the light shining, the wind picking, the body drying, a knock at her door.

A knock at her door.

She jumps, and for the first time in forever, her heart accelerates. It beats faster and faster as she runs to the door. There, hand against the hard wood, fingers going through another piece of embroidery, she pushes the door ever so slowly, fearing that the disruption of her peaceful and boring days might have just been a creation of her deliriously tired mind. She pushes and pushes, leaving the dust at the doorstep to fly as the wood passes over it, and as the light shines against her pale skin, she sees the silhouette of a man, small but strong, covered in a long dark blue cape. She stays silent, unsure of what to say, stunt at the intruder facing her. She knows this face, she knows those eyes, she knows this person that faces her proudly despite the age.

“Corporal Levi...” She whispers, hand still tangled in the embroidery, body still under the surprise. The man looks deeply into her eyes, boring though her every pore. He pushes the cape down, lets his hair float freely under the wind. She blinks.

“There’s a dead horse on your porch,” he says, disgust clear on his face, voice strongly carried by the wind. It resonates against the walls of her weak cabin only to echo right back into her head. “It’s disgusting.”

She sighs.


	2. Changer de vie comme de chemise

Levi changed quite a bit. Five years of peace after a hundred years of war change a man, definitely. And though the man still has his strong built, his muscles intact, the dark bags under his eyes seem smaller, a shade lighter than the last time she saw him. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, she doesn’t actually know exactly, but he seems more awake than she’s ever seen him. He also has gained some gray hair, finally, showing more of his age; he looks older, a little bit smaller, maybe time finally caught him. He still has his piercing gaze and the confidence he’s wore during all those years she’s known him is still there, in every step he takes, in every movement he makes. he’s sure of himself, he knows what he wants and where he’s going, an assurance Mikasa lost once war ended.

“You plan on inviting me in or do you just want me to just force my way through? I thought we were over that, Ackerman,” she blinks then not surprised by his lack of manners. If physically the man has changed quite a bit, the grumpy old man she had came to know hasn’t changed at all. So she pushes the door completely, freeing her hand from the embroidery, and lets him enter. Taking the cloth between her slim fingers, she closes the door behind him. The light disappears behind the dark wood, only shining through the sole window where she usually sits by. “You have anything to drink? Like tea,” he imposes himself on the sole chair in the kitchen, puts his bags down by the wall, right under the window. He doesn’t look at her in any single way, his eyes traveling to each and every piece of embroidery hanging from the walls, on the table, on the chair, covering the window. It’s everywhere and the man seems surprised by the finesse yet repetitive pattern of the cloths. He doesn’t ask anything else but judging by the looks he finally throws at her, she knows he is kind of curious. Still, she ignores his silent questions and goes to a cabinet near the window.

“I have leaves for the tea, but expect it to be cold,” she states, reaching out for the leaves she had found outside, during her rare hunting sessions. They’re completely dry, pale due the state of abandon they were left in for so long, and Mikasa can’t remember what plant they are. Still, she throws a handful of it in an old glass laying around and pours water. The color of the leaves, a red velvet, vividly colors the transparent water. Seeds as small as fleas float down to the bottom of the glass, tinting the water with a darker color. She takes the glass and offers it to him, observing his reaction. “Drink before it gets colder,” he doesn’t laugh, only inspects the liquid with skepticism. He takes the glass in his hand, careful of her fingers around it, and tastes the cold brew. He doesn’t show any reaction to the taste, only drinking it down, leaving most of the seeds at the bottom of the glass.

“Cold poppy tea is absolutely disgusting,” he simply says despite having drank the whole glass. She scoffs at his words. He hands her the glass back and she just discards it away, near the sink she built but never used. The dust has settled inside and as she puts the glass down, groups sheep dust fly around, carried by the rays going through the embroidery of the window. She can almost hear his disgust behind her.

He doesn’t say anything else. She can see from the corner of her eyes as his tongue moves around in his mouth, as he thinks his next words carefully. She’s never seen him so thorough and she can only guess that he isn’t here by chance or play of fate. He eyes her, lets his eyes wonder once more to the embroidery. They linger on the one of the window where birds are supposed to be chirping in a warm scene, with green grass and yellow sun, brown feathers and pink worms in gray beaks. And finally, after minutes of silence and observation, he moves from the chair, goes to the window, touching with careful movements the precision of the cloth. She never could have guessed that humanity’s strongest could be so precise in his movements, so careful of others’ creations, but here he is, fingertips calloused by still triggers and warm blood softly stroking the drawings of the embroidery. Here, in the deepest of silence, sun rays hitting his scarred skin, Mikasa discovers a new sight of the man she had learned to know all those years ago.

“I’ll go straight to the point Ackerman,” he starts, but seeing how she has built a dead life all around her for five whole years, he takes back his words and looks at her, meeting her watchful eyes. “If you want to hear it, that is.” She nods, grateful for the attention he gives her. His lips curve downward ever so slightly, seemingly hesitant. It’s a character trait she’s never seen on him. It doesn’t suit him. “It’s a job offer, actually,” he still looks at her, at the way she reacts. When she doesn’t, he continues, “now that the war has ended, almost all the branches of the military have been dissolved, only to form one. I’m guessing you didn’t know that,” she nods, unable to keep the surprise she feels. She’s fought in the military, fought for humanity, and knowing that the branch she fought in for so long has been dissolved like the war has never happened pains her more than she would have liked. “So most of our actions have disappeared, they aren’t talked about anymore. Soon it will all be forgotten.” She guesses a little where he is going, but she still is confused at his vague words. When he doesn’t continue, seemingly searching for his next words, she impatiently interferes.

“So you want me to go around and relate the tales of the survey corps to a population that never cared in the first place?” She lets her irritation get the better of her, already tired of someone she didn’t see for five whole years. And despite the feeling of comfort she feels as she has living and talking company for the first time in forever, she can’t ignore the annoyance she feels as she listens to this supposed job offer. “What good will it make? The government has always been against us, they had already erased most of the documents once the war had ended. Creating new ones will only give them a new reason reason to modify history the way they did before.”

The retired captain huffs, looking down at her from his small height. She feels irritated as he takes the conversation back, “Historia is working on restoring the books they burnt. And your job won’t be to write new ones but to write down what the people feel.”

She stays speechless for a second, but gains back hr posture almost immediately, “what the people feel? What kind of bullshit is that again? I don’t care about how they feel, they only complained. While we were dying outside, fighting for them, they would only lament on the money they lost. Why should I-”

“Mikasa, shut up for a second, will you?” He sharply cuts her, and though she badly wants to shove her fist down his throat even more than before, she keeps her hands down and listens, fuming at his sole presence. He ignores the way she glares at him, keeping his eye straight in hers. “You’ll write letters. From one person to another, you’ll write their words and pass it down. History isn’t only told through books, it’s also told by words, and that’s what you’ll do. You’ll travel all around the walls, outside, inside, to the new colonies and the old cities, and you’ll listen to what they have to say. Victims of the war, ignorant citizens, old prisoners, you’ll ignore their crimes, their cowardice, you’ll only tell back what they saw, understood and witnessed. It can seem useless, completely stupid even, but trust me,” he strongly approaches her, finger pointed at her, almost hitting her rib cage, right where her hart is. He seems furious but understanding, and she can’t even begin to comprehend how he can demonstrate those two feelings at the same time. She backs away, having lost the habit of fighting back. She feels weak but doesn’t feel threatened. He sees that, her feet taking a step back, her eyes confronted to something she isn’t used to anymore. He sighs, gains back his calm composure, but keeps his fingers firmly pressed on her heart. It might have felt intimate were it not for the fact that now, they both viewed the other as a stranger they once knew, in an old life they forgot. “Trust me, it’s important, and it is so much more complicated than fighting titans. You’re going to have to rely on understanding, on feelings, not on skills only. It’s not a threat you’ll have to fight but a new side of humanity you’ll have to understand. The one that got left behind, the one that didn’t fight but still suffered greatly. It can seem easy, but it isn’t. I wrote some letters already, and you get to see a sight you never thought you’ll discover. Some went through worst, some didn’t even know what titans looked like but still leaved in fear. Some were blinded by propaganda, some had to give in in order to understand a world they thought they knew but didn’t. It isn’t a waste of time or a waste of ink, Mikasa,” his voice gets gentle suddenly, he doesn’t look at her anymore but at the index he presses on her chest. He grew soft, she thinks, years of peace made him grow old and soft, softer than she thought he could be. “View it like that: imagine a new war, one that isn’t fought with blood and tears, but one that is fought with patience and sympathy. I can seem hard for you. Hell, it seemed hard for me too, when Hanji proposed the job to me, I thought she had lost all the sanity she had left. And for the both of us, understanding others is harder, harder than fighting. We’ve been weapons in a war we were born in. But now, we can be something else,” his voice is so low, so slow, she almost doesn’t hear the rest of his words as the wind grows stronger outside the cabin. The wood shakes and creaks, wood chips fall on their heads and by their feet. The embroidery trembles, the birds on the windows distorted by the movement of the cloth. He looks up at her then, and all she can see is raw emotion, things she never witnessed in his eyes. Years of fighting made him hard as steel, but years of peace made him human again. “If you can wield a sword, you can wield a pen. And if you can listen to the cries of agony of dying soldiers, you can listen to the tales of men.”

He backs up then, letting his hand fall back by his side. He awaits for her answer, ignoring the noises nature makes around them, ignoring the smell of rotten wood and drying flesh, the smell of wet poppy and old water. She looks at him, looks at the empty glass, looks at the poppy seeds floating in the blackened water at the bottom of the glass, looks at the embroidery that shakes and trembles, looks at the sheep dust that paint the ground around her feet. She thinks and thinks, but her words are none, and thoughts are lost, as she replays in her mind the words he’s thrown her way. She cannot begin to understand, cannot fully grasp the idea of living another life she doesn’t want, but when did she ever choose the life she lives anyway? When her family got stolen from her, when her peaceful days got stabbed and cut and crushed and devoured, when her friends got killed and murdered one after the other, did she ever choose her life?

“I don’t...” The retired captain shakes his head then, disappointed. He goes to grab the bags he’s left by the window, now covered by dust and wood, but she reaches for his wrist. Her fingers are strong on his bone, firmly holding the flesh. He turns around, she keeps his wrist on her hand. He sees her searching for her words and awaits. “I don’t… I cannot write, sir.” He looks at her, bewilderment clear on his face. He scoffs.

“You don’t know how to write? What kind of bullshit excuse is that?” He seems mad, she guesses, for his frown deepens and his lips turn downwards. When he tries to free his wrist from her grip, she strengthen her hold on him.

“Please, listen,” she pleads, and her own voice seems unfamiliar to her. She starts to see it, the way her life displeases her, the way staying here, waiting to rot just like her horse, isn’t something she wants anymore. He is there, offering her a new life, a new way to forgive her sins and her crimes, the lives she’s killed and the families she’s broken. Like a lifeline, she keeps him in her hand, holds him tight. He’s not a stranger she’s seen a long time ago anymore but a new source of hope, a new way for her to apologize. “I know how to read, but I never really learned how to write. We lived isolated, back where writing wasn’t something needed, and with no one to write to, my mother never judged it useful. She taught me how to read, taught me how to embroider, taught me the ways of our people, but never taught me how to write,” she’s never talked about her mother to him, to almost no one except Eren and Armin, so he listens. And just as he told her before, instead of judging her, he understands.

“Then I’ll teach you,” he sighs, staying firm in her grip. They both stand facing each other. A new determination is born in his eyes, and he takes a pen out of his pocket, handing it to her. “I’ll teach you how to write, and you’ll follow me.” He awaits. She looks at the small pen, one she never saw before, with a compartment for the ink with the tip curved elegantly, a slit in the middle. She sees the dry ink at the tip, the careful way he holds the pen. She reaches for the pen, takes it from his hand.

“I’ll learn, then.” She almost smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello!
> 
> So, I know that Mikasa not knowing how to write can seem a bit out of the blue or stupid, but I don't recall ever seeing her write in the manga and honestly, I kinda like the idea that she doesn't know how to. So now, in my list of headcanons, there's a new special place for "Mikasa doesn't know how to write and Levi had to teach her". I kinda see Armin or her own parents, adoptive or biological ones, teaching her too but oh well. Let's just not go there. I like my few but cool headcanons, hé hé.
> 
> Also, I deeply apologize for any mistakes. I tend to be a little bit lazy once I finish a chapter and never really read it again after that. I admit, I'm lazy and most of the time, I just go do other things after writing, as I mostly write when I have an idea, out of nowhere. So really, I apologize.
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for the positive feedbacks! I'm always glad to see people liking my stories, even if they aren't that great to begin with. So thank you dearly, and I hope I don't end up disappointing any of you.
> 
> Sur-ce, buh-bye!


	3. Un paysage nouveau, une vie oubliée

She had forgotten, in five long and boring years, how a landscape she once knew could change. The grass that used to be crushed every single day by dozens and dozens of titans that they thought would endlessly come at the time, the ground that had turned brown, soaked with the blood of unnamed soldiers, the ones they could never retrieve with each expedition, the ones that would never have tombstones with their names and their last words engraved in it, the ones that families never saw again even in death. But now, walking by Levi’s side, him on his own horse, her by foot, she sees that the grass has gained back its color, a vivid green she’s never seen before except in the walls, around small cities and forgotten places, where neither humans nor monsters could walk on. Despite the cold and the winter that is coming their way the grass stays green, so clear and so clean, she can feel the herb timidly tickling her knees and her calves, going under her dirty white skirt right up her legs. It’s a struggle to walk through and she tries to ignore the grasshoppers and other bugs that enter her boots and eat through the cloth of her skirt, devouring the thread of the embroidery she has decorated her old skirt with. Again, it’s brown birds yellow sun, but this time they tingle red and orange leaves, an autumnal setting drawing on the white cloth covering her thighs and shins, stopping right at her ankles. She wishes she had bought pants when she had left, but with no war to fight and only the desire to rot away in solitude, she had only taken the skirts of her late mother and the dresses Sasha had made her buy for a ceremony they never went to together. In the end, she remembers vividly, she had went alone, dressed in a form-fitting uniform, with her comrades dressed according to the festivities. When asked about her uniform she had just said that she didn’t have any dresses, a pathetic excuse of a lie, one she preferred to the horrid truth she had in mind. With no Sasha by her side she hadn’t felt strong enough to wear the dresses she had bought. What a shame, they truly were beautiful.

Levi’s horse stops and the man turns around, tired eyes looking at her expectantly. She doesn’t really move, looking back at him, waiting for him to move again. But he doesn’t and so here they stand, her covered by the grass, him high on his equally tired horse. She sees his impatience getting the best of him and he jumps down his horse. Though the image of him being covered up to the waist by the high grass is one she would have laughed at a long time ago, just to tease him and his small height, she restrains herself of doing so. The fact that it isn’t hard, that not even a small smile draws on her lips, she guesses she hasn’t laugh in too long of a time. She might have forgotten the how and the why of laughing and smiling at someone. But Levi, him, strangely smiles. He looks down at her feet, follows the frail furrow of the grass mounting her legs, going under her skirt, up her legs. He looks at her waist, her chest, her shoulders, her neck and then her face. Her tired eyes tell him to stop, to shut up and to mount his horse again, to not turn around and not talk to her before they finally arrive to the inner cities, where they will stop and rest. But the man never listened, always so proud and stubborn, and as his right hand catches her left one, she can only imagine how she will finally have an excuse to hit him without worrying about any sadistic kind of punishment. And yet she doesn’t move, grass covering her legs, sun peeking behind her back, her hair falling with the wind and her eyes following his as they settle on his hand. She has missed the feeling of someone touching her, even just a little, has missed the proximity of a human body, and she suddenly wants to stay there, warmed up by the sun, the grass on her skin and his hand in hers.

“You’ll ride the horse with me,” he says sternly as he pulls her with him, “the grass is too high now, you’ll only slow us down,” he mounts the horse easily, the stirrup iron being lower than usual. Once again she doesn’t laugh, barely acknowledging the difference, deciding instead to just climb and keep her snarky comments to herself. She snakes her arms around his waist, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling she has, never having been this close to the man, even in almost ten years of fighting side by side. “You okay behind?” His voice is low and as she answers, she lets her breath tickle the side of his neck. He doesn’t shiver, merely acknowledges her answer, focusing instead on directing the horse through the field of high grass.

Small droplets of water run down her legs, wetting her soaks, and as the horse starts to accelerate, the droplets fly around, wetting her pale skin, streaming down her cheeks and arms. His hair tickles her nose, the sun giving it a brownish shade, one she never paid attention to. She settles more comfortably on the saddle, letting her head fall back, neck exposed to the sun, rays burning her skin despite the cold temperature. The travel is silent and the movements of the horse hurt her back, having lost the habit of riding one. She doesn’t feel much guilt about her horse, the carcass she left back at the cabin, only to rot and dry on the porch, skeletal head forever stuck between the railings. She can only imagine the worms hassle the dead animal, following the emptied intestines, eating through the flesh, themselves being eaten by bigger animals, the ones she stopped hunting after a while of loneliness. She doesn’t miss the animal, doesn’t regret his abandon, doesn’t feel any remorse at the thought that she could have led a more adequate life with it, giving it the retirement it truly deserved as a warhorse. She deserved a better retirement too, with her friends and comrades by her side, but she had preferred to flee away, staying alone, far from her own kind of guilt and her own kind of memories. She had wanted to relive the life of her mother, but with no one by her side and the souvenirs of war plaguing her mind, she had quickly given up on this kind of life. Her mother had deserved the peaceful life, not her.

“Ackerman,” Levi cuts her train of thought and as his voice booms in her ears she realizes that the grass doesn’t reach her thighs anymore, the wetness having transformed in humidity, making her skirt stick to her skin. It’s uncomfortable but she ignores it in favor of looking where he’s pointing. “We’re arriving soon, we’ll stop just inside the walls.” She nods but he can’t see so she grips his waist a little tighter. He nods then and hits the horse with the heel of his feet a little harder, making the animal speed. For a moment she feels the wind in her lungs leave her, and she doesn’t know of it comes from the speed of the horse or the vision of the walls, still high, still proud, symbol of years of war, years of fear and oppression. “Breathe Ackerman,” he whispers, his voice carried by the wind all the way to her ears. She takes a breath, breathes hard, inhaling the scent of the city that draws near.

She looks up, huffing at his hair that now tickles the pale skin of her neck. While the landscapes around her have just become a blur, the walls is just as precise as ever. High up she can see small figures, as small as ants, working on the stone. She sees debris falling, crashing on the ground, parts of the walls being destroyed. She has never been religious, has always hated the walls and what was inside, but all she can think about is her childhood they’re breaking, the years of fighting they’re ignoring. She feels an itch deep in her chest, where her heart is, and she snakes her arms a little farther around him, pressing her nose against his back. He looks behind, looks at her form fitting his, looks at her arms around his waist, and he makes the horse slow down. Now the horse trots, steps hitting lightly the jagged ground where canons halls and dust of bones remain. The gate is just facing them, wide open for anyone to go through, and as the horse goes under, entering wall Maria right where Shiganshina used to be, she feels an overwhelming number of feelings entering her chest and head, warming her whole body with contradicting sensations. Melancholy, nostalgia, apprehension, hatred, fear, joy. She shakes as those old feelings overwhelm her, devouring her whole.

The horse stops, the gate far behind now. They find themselves in the middle of the old city, buildings entirely new, decorations everywhere, colors blinding her like never before. It isn’t Shiganshina anymore but a city she doesn’t know, one she never saw before, built on the graves of hundreds of soldiers, covering the old city she once lived in. It’s brighter, there’s music being played and people singing, traveling from all around, walking though an open market. She sees artists, she sees children, she sees couples, she sees animals, but she can’t see any of the things she remembers. She can’t see her second house, she can’t see her friends, she can’t see familiar faces. She knows yet doesn’t know this place, she feels at home yet feels like a stranger, a foreigner, one that stops here never to stay. It’s the city Eren, Armin and her lived in, but it’s an entirely new one, one that could never feel right, one they could never settle in. Maybe that’s why Eren and Armin left to travel around the world, because they already knew they didn’t have a place to stay, one they’ll feel at home.

“We’ll stay the night here and leave tomorrow morning,” Levi says in front of her as he leads her and the horse through the wide streets. They zigzag through the people, and while he doesn’t look around, already knowing the destination, not wanting to waste any time, she can’t help but observe the lively streets, way more noisy and dynamic than the ones she knew. She settles on liking this new place, pushing the pain away, way back onto her chest where no one can reach. It hurts to think this way, but she had made peace with the tragedies that happened in her life a long time ago.

“Why...” She thinks of her words but they seem lost in the crowd, her eyes never settling anywhere, jolting between fresh apples and beautiful dancers. “What happened to Shiganshina?” Her voice breaks at the end and the shame that comes with it is louder than the streets. She blushes and looks down, deciding on keeping her mouth shut. But Levi doesn’t laugh, barely acknowledges her, still walking ahead.

“They cleaned the debris and built a new city on the old one, it’s as simple as that.”

“In five years only?”

“Well, the war having ended, couples started fucking everywhere like pigs. So now new brats are born and there’s no place anywhere,” she can hear clearly the disgust in his voice. She shrugs and settles her gaze on a group of kids laughing and playing around, wetting each other with cold water. Never, in their times in Shiganshina, would Eren, Armin and her have played with water. It was too expensive to buy clean bottles and the water in the river was covered by trash and excrement.

“It was inevitable, I guess,” she shrugs again. One of the kids falls, letting go of the water he had in his hands. He cries for a moment before his mother takes him on his arms. The kid is completely soaked from head to toe, and Mikasa can only imagine how he must be freezing in this weather. At least the sun is warm. “I can understand them.”

“So you want a brat of your own?” He asks curiously, stopping and turning around. The horse neigh behind him, putting its muzzle against the man’s cheek. Mikasa only blushes at the attention, fleeing his gaze. Ignoring his question and the sudden curiosity that comes with it, she pushes past him, patting the horse. Levi laughs and goes past her again. “Five years of nothingness made you soft Ackerman,” she ignores him again and simply follows. The sound of a piano is heard from far away, simple notes being awkwardly played, surely by a child. She blindly follows him, listening to the dull notes. When he stops so does she, and when she looks up she sees a tall and clean building. The facade is a dirty white, covered with flowers all around the windows and the door. “That’s the hotel we’ll stay in. I already booked the room, so just ask the reception,” he ties the horse to a pole outside and turns towards her. His nose is slightly redden by the cold temperature, giving him a slightly younger look. “I have some errands to run. Don’t wait for me.” With that he leaves, walking back into the crowd. After some seconds he disappears behind the people and Mikasa enters the hostel.

It’s wide, vividly decorated. Old swords adorn the walls, fancy paintings and portraits. She recognizes Erwin, a small picture of him hanging just above the reception desk. That’s where he died, she thinks, and she tries to ignore the memories of the battle coming back to her. They lost almost everything this day, and when she thinks of the way they all acted, selfishly and stupidly, she doesn’t think of any glory to commemorate. The man has been embellished too, clear skin, eyes bluer and clearer than they truly were, blond hair dull compared to their beautiful color. She shakes her head and heads towards the reception. There, a small woman, brown hair in a clean bun, dark eyes, welcomes her with a loud and cheery voice. Mikasa asks for her room and the petite woman happily leads her to one of the biggest rooms they have. Before leaving, the frail woman thanks her, and Mikasa can only nod, eagerly waiting for her to leave. The door closes and finally, Mikasa can take in her surroundings.

The room is big, is the first think she thinks about. Though the ceiling is low, the room are painted in the way that makes it seem high. Two wide beds are disposed opposite of each other and two couches are sat at the end of each bed. Everything is symmetrical and clean, from the decorations on the wall to the pillows on the beds. The colors are warm and welcoming but still, Mikasa doesn’t feel at home. So she just settles on one of the beds, sitting at the edge, not moving the sheets and the pillows. She’s tired, exhausted even, but she doesn’t want to sleep, doesn’t feel like she would be able to. She discards her boots away, removes her skirt, keeping only her shirt and her underwear on. She lays down. Awake and unmoving, she stays still. She only waits and waits. If she closes her eyes she can see the old ceiling of her cabin, she can feel the wind through the cracks, she can smell the horse, she can hear the rain tapping against the roof. She waits and waits, but doesn’t sleep.

When Levi comes back it’s around midnight. In his arms are bags full of cloths and food. He discards them on a table by her bed. He goes to his own bed, quietly walking. She hears him undress and it’s when he’s finally settled, in the dead of the night, that she moves again.

“Levi,” she whispers, and though her voice is small it suddenly seems louder than the streets from before. The man doesn’t move but she knows he’s listening. “Levi, teach me how to write.” She has his pen in her hand, paper between her fingers. Levi doesn’t move for a minute and she fears that he won’t answer but after a minute he finally moves, goes to stand by her side on the bed. He takes the pen and the paper away from her fingers and puts them neatly on the table, right by the bags’ side.

“Tomorrow,” he whispers back. He pushes her shoulders and she doesn’t resist. She lays still, head on the many pillows. There’s no moon to see and no light to thanks, she can’t see his face nor his silhouette. He’s a shadow in the darkness and yet he moves and walks with precise agility, like he knows where she stands and knows how the room is. He goes back to his place, she hears it clearly in the night. He lays down, shuffles under the sheets. And then he stays silent, completely still. Mikasa wants to speak again, wants to stubbornly ask him, but at the last minute, right when she opens her mouth, she takes a deep breath and closes her lips. She closes her eyes. “Tomorrow,” he murmurs again.

This time, Mikasa smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's taking so long. There's really no excuse for me not posting but my laziness, I'm really sorry!  
On a more positive note though, I finally got back to writing! It took me some time and effort, but I got back into the story. Chapter thirteen might not be as 'readable' as other chapters, but finally, I found the courage to get back to writing. I don't write as much as before, and there are still so many passages and ideas that I have yet to write into the story, but I feel kind of good now, hé hé.  
Anyway, I hope you're still into it. I know it's slow and short, but stay with me for a moment, there are chapters I'm really proud of as I love describing sceneries and landscapes and characters, and some later chapters contain lots of those, so... hé hé again.
> 
> Any-Anyway, hope you liked this one! I'll try to do better for you guys, I really don't know how to can bare with me to be honest. And I'm really thankful for that.  
Sur-ce, see you later!


	4. L'encrier d'agonie

“The curves of your letters aren’t right. Make them longer. They’re supposed to be elegant and large compared to the other smaller letters.”

Mikasa sighs against her palm. Pen in hand, she tires at every curve she has to redo in order to make him happy. Yes she asked, she almost begged -not that she would ever admit that, especially to him- but right at this moment, ink covering the tip of her every fingers, his harsh words irritate her to no end. She’s never written anything, not even her name. She’s never showed how terribly she could write. Not to her mother, not to Eren, not to Armin. She’s never told anyone before that her mother had taught her how to read but never how to write. Never before had she have the real opportunity to write something. Back then, right after the tragedy she had to face, where she lost her parents and the only things she ever had, Carla had asked her if she knew how to read and write. She had simply answered yes, too ashamed to tell the truth, seeing Eren’s already beautiful writing and Armin’s gorgeous cursive letters. She never picked up a pen to show her, never touched ink for her new family. And once that had also disappeared, just like before, in order to feed Armin and Eren, Mikasa had only used her mind and her body, not that she would tell anyone. Money wasn’t current and corrupted police was easier to seek than a fancy recommendation letter from some higher ups to feed their mouth of empty promises on dirty yellow paper. So no, she never found the utility to learn, never tried to. And now, older and in serious need of some education, she finally sees how everything has been harder than supposed to without the skills required.

“See, you hold your pen badly. You’re crushing the feed by pressing it like that. Tilt it,” he shows her, taking the pen and softly pressing the tip of the pen against the paper. Ink flows carefully and smoothly out of the feed, the nib opening slightly to let the ink flow. When he moves his hand, the sole movement of his wrist making the ink mark the paper below it, it’s beautifully calculated cursive letters that decorate the sheet. Mikasa pales a little more as she compares his precise curves to her shaky and unsure ones. When he gives her the pen back, it’s with a soft look and an almost paternal edge to his slow movements. She takes the pen softly from in between his fingers and places it correctly between hers. The black section of the pen is anxiously pressed against her right thumb, index and the distal phalanx of her middle finger while the barrel full of ink lightly touches the proximal phalanx of her index, continuing down the metacarpal. She pays close attention to where the pen rests, where it begins and where it ends. Levi pushes her hand down against the paper, her little finger brushing against the paper. “Put just a little bit of pressure on the tip, just enough to part the nib,” she does as he says and just like that, the ink flows slowly but precisely. A small stain forms under the tip while she awaits for his next instruction. He nods then moves her hand. “Move your wrist,” she tries but her whole arm moves instead, the elbow and shoulder following the movement of her hand. Levi puts his hand on her forearm, lodging it against the table. “I know it’s going to be complicated at first, but take a deep breath and block your arm. It’s your wrist that writes, not your elbow, not your shoulder. They don’t impose the movement, they just follow,” with his hand on her forearm she moves her wrist. She watches closely as the bones shape the skin, as the tendons and the nerves draw her wrist and her hands, as the cartilages of her fingers dig the back of her hand and move along her. She traces small circles first then slowly starts to shape letters, still lightly pushing the feed against the paper. Soon it’s cursive letters that cover the page. His hand stays on her forearm and he watches closely as she learns quickly. First it’s slow, deliberate motions that she does but soon, just as swiftly as she’s learned to wield a sword, the patterns of her letters become more distinct, more precise yet faster, and she starts to recognize Armin’s handwriting in her own, the cursive letters she had seen so much coming out of his hands and his cheap pens. Levi sighs, content, backing away from her. He watches her write again and again before walking away, sitting by the window.

And just like that they stay, silently paying attention to what they are doing. While she pays no mind to her surroundings, only drawing the letters in alphabetic order with pure determination and concentration, finding the motions excruciating yet absolutely endearing, he watches the streets getting louder then turns back towards her, observing from afar her gestures, her careful eyes. She’s slightly bent down, her shoulder blades sticking out from her shirt, the same dirty one she had yesterday, her elbow stay just at the edge of the table right in the middle of the room, her wrist follows her fingers which follow the pen, letting the ink flow beautifully down the paper, down the steel edge of the expensive pen he always had on him.

He had waited months and months to find her, fearing she might have ended it all after the war, desperate for a purpose she’s lost because of Eren, because of the war having ended, because of the peace she never learned to know and appreciate. He had kept the pen closely, tucked deep in his pocket, waiting for the opportunity to give it to her just like he’s passed her the sword that served to kill the enemies they fought for so long. Finding her back, far from any form of civilization, the body of a dead horse on her porch, remains of a time that ended long ago. He had found himself surprised at the happiness he had felt, seeing her all in one piece, though constantly disheveled, dirty and thinner than before, muscles soft, silhouette frailer than ever. The fact that she has accepted his proposition in such a short amount of time and the surprise and astonishment he had seen on her face had showed him how desperate she truly was for a new life, one she would feel at ease in. He sticks his forehead against the cold window, sighing. His exhale draws mist on the glass.

“Captain Levi,” he hears her voice behind him and when he turns around, she’s looking directly at him, her fingers covered in dried up blue ink, some even smeared on her left ear, surely where she had tucked her hair away while writing.

“I’m not in the Survey Corps anymore,” he tells her from where he sits, and she simply nods at his words. Feeling like she didn’t understand his words, he reiterates, “call me Levi.” This time she takes longer before nodding back at him, a little hesitant.

“Levi...” She’s tasting the water, he can see that, and he finds it amusing how her voice seems so unsure of the simple name. “Levi, what is the name of the city?”

“It’s Shiganshina, just like before,” he says, frowning at her. “Didn’t you live here?”

“I did, it’s just… I thought that, seeing how everything changed, they would have at least changed the name of it,” she fidgets with the pen, spilling ink her her nails. His eyes twitch at the sight and he goes to stand by her side, taking the pen away before she spills more on herself or the paper, dirtying his own skin in the process. He huffs at the sight, having never spilled ink on his fingers in years of writing, be it with feathers or pens.

“I don’t see why they would change the name of a whole city just because it was destroyed,” he puts the pen down by her side, just aside her hand, and goes to take a towel in the bathroom. Mikasa observes him walking around, traveling from one room to the other. She puts her eyes on the pen and waits. Once he is in the bathroom, shuffling with his dirty cloths and the towels left around, she walks up to the door and shuts it. She hears him gasp before cursing, the handle moving around in her grip. “The hell you’re doing, brat? Open the door,” his voice is muffled from behind the door.

“Levi,” she feels him letting of the handle. He stays quiet from the other side of the door. She looks down at the handle, round made out of white steel, cleanly polished just for them. Now that she looks at her surroundings with more details, she sees a pristine place, clean from dust and dirt, smelling of fresh lilac. “Listen, please,” and he still stays quiet, surely listening to her every word despite the wooden door being in the way. It’s easier to talk and open up when she doesn’t see him, and maybe it’s because of her period of solitary life, living away for five whole years, with only the company of a dying horse and silent trees, or maybe it’s because she has yet to make her peace with him, but talking from away, behind an obstacle, but she finds it easier and more comfortable. She knows deep down that he won’t judge her but she still apprehends his thoughts. “I want us to leave as soon as possible.” For a moment Levi stays silent and she fears his insults, the ones she has yet to forget, even after so much time apart. But then she hears him move, she hears the sound of a towel being wet, the sound of his feet echoing around the room.

“Why?” A time of silent passes away, just like in the woods, she wants to stay silent. “Mikasa, answer me. Why?” She knows he understands her, he wouldn’t feel comfortable coming back to where he grew up and where he lost everything. Or maybe it’s different; they might be the same in battle but he knows they don’t think alike.

“This town… It isn’t mine to stay in. I don’t know the people, I don’t know the houses, I don’t know the streets. It’s all different. It feels like...” He hears her breathe harshly from behind the door. The handle moves, the door opens up ever so slightly. She sees his figure through the crack of the door, but it doesn’t open all the way through. He lets her speak her mind and she’s thankful for that. “It feels like I never grew up here. It might be selfish, but they took away the last of my memories. The house, the basement, they destroyed everything, didn’t they?” He opens the door entirely, forcing her to back away. With a towel in hand and gentle eyes looking at her, he takes her hands and cleans the ink off her fingers. He does softly, slowly, cautiously washing all the stains. Under her nails, around her skin, deep in the scars, he washes everything.

“They did,” he feels her breath on his head, feels the muscles of her fingers tense. Once her hand is clean, once only particles of ink remain, he lets go of her hands and puts the towels on her bed. She goes and sits by the table, taking back the pen. He sits on front of her and pays attention to the very details of her handwriting. It’s already clean and she’s written her name, her age, her likes and her dislikes, things he didn’t know about her. It might have grounded her, he thinks. It might have kept her sane to remain herself everyday of who she is, what she likes and dislikes, what she used to do, to say, like a mantra she keeps deep in her heart. “We’ll leave right after noon, when the sun is high. I already prepared the water and the food, you just have to change.”

“I don’t have any clothe to wear,” he looks at her, at the shirt she’s wearing and the skirt she’s put on. It’s dirty, the embroidery she’s done on it isn’t as pretty as it was before, the threads having been torn apart during the travel. Birds aren’t birds anymore, leaves have holes in it, the autumnal landscape is no more and looks more like an old battlefield than anything else.

“I bought you clothes. Simple skirts and shirts,” he simply tells her, nodding at the bags he’s bought back from the market. She goes and takes it, emptying the clothes on her bed. A bluish skirt, practical enough for travel yet still elegant in its own way, and a white shirt with long sleeves adorned with ruffles around the collar and the wrists. When she looks at the bottom of the paper she can see a transparent box full of colorful threads and large needles. She looks up at him, thankfulness written all over her face. He simply nods again. “That’s for you, too. If you want to decorate the skirt. It seems like you made a habit of embroidering every single thing you own.”

“I did,” she really looks grateful, the ghost of a smile adorning her pinkish lips, and Levi looks out the window, turning the pen around his thumb. He hears her undress and put on the new clothes. When he looks up she’s admiring the ruffles, and when he really thinks about it, fancier clothes really suit her. She takes the box and holds it against her. “Thank you, Levi.”

This time, Levi smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry for the wait, but I wanted to finish writing the whole fic first. sadly, I didn't finish it, and I have to post all the chapters I wrote all at once because my computer fell and half of the screen is completely black. I don't have the money to buy a new one, so I'm just gonna post everything and wait until I can buy a new one to write the end of the fic. I don't know when teh other half is gonna just disappear, so I don't want to write on this computer anymore and lose what I have. So here you have it, the chapters I didn't post.


	5. Tout est à graver

Though she guesses the sun is high, it doesn’t show through the thick plum of clouds.

They had left the afternoon, just like he had told her. He kept his promise and, as quickly as they came, they left, putting aside their apprehension. The city was forgotten, at least to him. Mikasa couldn’t forget the way they built over her childhood, the way the smiling children, the peaceful music, had felt foreign in her eyes and ears. It wasn’t the same city she had learned to know. It was a strangely familiar sensation, one that felt unfamiliar, and leaving the city had left a sensation of relief flooding though her whole core. Silently, she had thanked Levi and the way he had just politely dismissed her doubts and apprehension. So they had left, never to look back, and now that they are silently walking one by the other, Levi leading his horse by his left, Mikasa silently following by his right. It felt right, correct, to follow him. She hadn’t felt company in years, five, he had told her not so long ago, and though the man was a silent and cold one, always looking ahead and never looking back, she felt as if she could stay by his side, working with him in a job she never thought she would do.

Of course she had her doubts. It was knew for her, the soldier she had learned to become now just a pale memory on the back of her mind, having been softened by years of idleness and loneliness. She could vividly remember the way her comrades fell, the way limbs and broken hearts flew around in the bloody battles she fought, falling down on dirty battlefields, full of corpses and shadows. Defeat had been known, they knew the song by heart, same melody of tragic loss. She had known it, too, and soon, of she meets her friends again, she will know it again, she knows. The more she stays silent and the more she thinks, the more she thinks the less she forgets. She shudders under the cold wind, the absence of sun in the late afternoon not helping. Levi doesn’t side her a glance, doesn’t even bother asking anything. She’s grateful and bitter for that, and so she only walks, hiding the falter of her steps under the skirt he’s bought for her.

The landscape, she guesses again, is a new one, one she’s never paid any attention to. She can see from afar that snow is falling, in a faraway land she never tried to travel to. Surely Eren and Armin visited, at least walked through it, detailed maps and compass in hands. She doesn’t know and can’t imagine if Eren has cut his hair or if Armin has let his grow again. She just sees her two childhood friends walking by the other’s side joyfully, drawing the new flowers they meet, taking in the old mountains, the clear forests, engraving it in the back of their minds, never to forget the journey the created until their last remaining days. It will be soon, a voice in the back of her head chants, sooner for Eren and then for Armin. She shakes her head, lets the wind pick up her hair, lets her eyelashes bat and hide the light. She closes her eyes and follows Levi blindly. When she tries to picture the both of them again, brown hair green eyes, blond hair blue eyes, she finds them young, joyful, before the war when everything was peaceful, when the veil of ignorance was covering their lives. She can’t see them older, can’t imagine them now. She doesn’t know how to feel about that and so, alone in her mind, she opens her eyes again, erasing their silhouettes from her confused thoughts.

The mountains far away, small and old ones, are covered in thick snow, she guesses, as the weak sun reflects on them. She sees trees and old houses far away, she sees the movement of the wind, picking up dirt and grass, and she sees a new colony, she guesses, far from here, at equal distance between her and the mountains. She thinks about the families that have settled, about the children that are playing out in the cold. When she tries to imagine herself settling somewhere inside the walls she can’t see anything. She quickly gives up and looks elsewhere, guessing that a life as peaceful as theirs is one she doesn’t deserve, one she maybe will never be able to build for herself. She wonders if Levi feels the same.

On the other side, behind Levi and behind the horse, she can see a field of dead crops and old houses that don’t seem to be lived in anymore. Dead plants and ruins cover the field, cadavers of broken trees surround the area. When she squints she can see the glint of steel reflecting under the gray light. A blade hangs down a tree, and she knows, from the poor and desolated sight, that this place is too harsh of a reminder of the war for the people. An old battlefield, one she maybe fought in but can’t remember, grim reminder of their moments of weakness and defeat. She’s been wounded many, many times, and she usually remembers where she fought and where she’s been injured, but this place seems too old, too deserted. The more she tries to force dark memories in the forefront of her mind and the more she feels weak again the wind. She blinks and ignores the way her eyes sting, the way the frozen grass is crushed under her boots, the way her fingers are going numb from the cold.

She diverts her eyes from the pathetic landscape and looks down for a second. Her boots are dirty, wet grass sticking to the worn out leather, but at least the new socks Levi gave her are dry. She wiggles her toes under the leather, bumps forming at the tip of her boots. Compared to her fingers her toes are kept warm. She sighs and rubs her hands against the skirt, circling her fingers around the new fabric. Once her fingers are comfortably covered by the clothe she looks up, letting her eyes wander to Levi. She takes in his position, his whole silhouette, letting it engrave the back of her eyes. She tries not to forget the way he stood before, and when she compares his old self to his new one, she finds him almost no different. Physically he seems a bit older, but he still stands his ground, he still looks sure of himself and confident. He walks in large strides, leading the path with the confidence of the soldier he used to be. But when she narrows her almond eyes and looks closer, paying attention to the details of his skin, she finds his fingers to be thinner, his skin to be smoother, his lips to be moist and his eyes to be more open than before. The bags under his eyes are less prominent despite still being there, and strangely he looks older and younger at the same time. She finds herself being conflicted. She stares at him for too long, she guesses, for he turns his eyes towards her. She’s embarrassed and looks away, and for a second more she feels his eyes on her. Silence remains between them but finally, he speaks. He isn’t looking at her then.

“We’ll stop soon,” he tells her simply. His steps are still steady, his eyes are drawn to the horizon. When she looks at where he’s looking she sees sees wall Rose standing tall. A little bit broken, old and invaded by vines climbing high on the stone. The gates are wide open, and yet again she feels it strange, so unfamiliar. “Your first client is in this city. You’ll see him tomorrow at noon. Until then you’ll write more. You might have a steady hand but your letters are still shit.” She scoffs but doesn’t say otherwise, and when she looks at him he seems pleased by her reaction though a little bothered at her silence. He looks at her then, and when he just grins, she does the same. “Don’t get cocky on me, brat. You might have learned quickly but you’re still shit at writing.”

“I didn’t say anything, old man,” she bites back, and finally his grin widens. She realizes then that she has fell for it, that she has let her old self answer for her. She huffs and looks away, staring back at the wall facing them both. His stare lingers on her and, strangely, she doesn’t feel irritated by it. “And if you see my writing as terrible then why giving me a job so soon?” He doesn’t answer as quickly as before. Curiosity takes the best of her as she looks back at him. His eyes stare deeply into hers and though she feels flustered by the attention he’s giving her she doesn’t doesn’t look away, standing her ground just like he does. His eyes soften, he looks back ahead.

“You’ll see when we get there. For now just shut up, your voice already tires me to no end,” she wants to cuss at him but she keeps herself silent. He tongue remains immobile. So she looks up at him, follows the curve of his back, settles her stare in his. He isn’t looking at her but she knows he feels her stare, and so she doesn’t move her eyes. It’s strange to see him so calm and so free, it’s alienating and maybe, just maybe, she sees him being a better person, one that deserves her attention and her patience.

She diverts her eyes only when they walk through the gates. The sun has already set, the sky is dark and the path is only lit by the remaining candles of the houses of the city. Compared to Shiganshina the city is sleeping, there’s silence everywhere, only their steps are breaking through it like blades swinging through thin air. It’s another new feeling, one of peaceful calm that settles deep in her core. Her leather boots echo against the stones of the ground, the rhythm of her steps regular, along with Levi and his horse’s walk. She still follows him. He walks through narrow paths and dark streets, leading her to a small house, shied away against the wall at the back of the city. The streets are darker, more obscure, and only lit candles lighten the place around.

When they finally stop, Levi lets go of the horse, letting it roam freely around, and he knocks against the wooden door. It takes time for the person to answer and Mikasa just waits silently behind him. She tries to look around but the sky is too dark, not even the moon shines through the thick clouds. She shivers when the wind picks up, unconsciously coming closer to Levi by the door. The man curses at the lack of answer. The candles are lit but no one comes to open, and she begins to worry as the house stays silent. He knocks harder, his knuckles hard against the wood. After a minute more, when she’s ready to just leave, the door swings open widely and abruptly, and Mikasa flinches as it hit the wall in a loud bang. She looks up and, eyes wide open, she lets her mouth hang open, eyes deeply set on the person facing them both.

“Levi, Mikasa! What a pleasant surprise!”

“I told you we would come, shitty glasses. Now step aside, it’s fucking cold,” he pushes past the tall woman, not even excusing his presence. Mikasa just stands there, taking in the person she hasn’t seen for so long. When Levi looks back she’s still frozen in place. “You planning on freezing out here? Enter,” and so she does.

Hanji smiles brightly, closing the door behind her. The wind is cut short, warmth invade her through every pore of her skin, and a new sense of familiarity takes over every sensation she’s felt until now. Levi observes her carefully while Hanji turns around her, taking in the younger woman’s appearance. When she finally stops, facing her so closely, she smiles warmly.

“I’m glad to see you, Mikasa,” she simply says, holding her hand out for Mikasa to shake. Mikasa reaches out, takes her warm hand in. She shakes it lightly, one step at a time. She feels warmer than she’s felt before, engraving the older woman’s smile deep in the back of her mind, never to forget how she’s unknowingly missed her. Hanji shakes her hand harder.

This time, Mikasa chuckles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day, I'm gonna explain the titles, I swear. One day...


	6. Rester la fille d'une mère, devenir femme

The house, though seemingly small from the exterior, is bigger that she thought. Tons and tons of newspapers adorn every space on the walls. From freshly taken pictures to news articles, Hanji didn’t have any king off normal decoration. When Mikasa casts a closer look at the articles near her she can read old news, ones that occurred while she was still young, and new ones, ones that happened during her exile. The subjects range from crimes to discoveries, from anomalies in humans to stories of miracles. The war articles, the ones telling and counting their fights, the battles they led, seem strangely put in a corner of the room and, when she checks on the type of paper and on the date written on them, she’s surprised they are only few and old, the paper almost crumbling under the pressure of the pins pinning them on the wall. She sees dirty fingerprints on some of them, sometimes covering specific words sometimes highlighting unknown faces and anonymous quotations, but mostly, they seem to surround details around titans, the mysteries they created when they first appeared and the mysteries they took with them in their graves. It’s mostly scientific papers, one Mikasa never bothered to read through but that Hanji always had at reaching length.

“Mikasa, come seat with us,” Hanji sweetly says, calmer than Mikasa’s ever heard her talk. It’s strange to see such new light in Hanji’s presence, the way she holds herself in a motherly manner, the way she smiles softly each and every time Mikasa looks at her. She’s has dropped any type of honorifics and though it feels alienating it also feels welcoming and reassuring in a way Mikasa wishes she had known before. “It’s been a while now, hasn’t it?” Hanji tells her once Mikasa is sat by her side on an old and worn out leather sofa. She passes her a tea cup filled to the edge of warm water and presents her leaves Mikasa’s never seen before. The younger woman, not knowing the taste of any of those, simply takes in between her fingers the smallest leaf she can find. It’s brown, a dark one, and Mikasa simply crushes the leaf above her tea cup, letting the crumples fall into the water. It slowly taints the transparent liquid in a yellowish color. When she drinks it it strangely tastes sour, the taste spreading all around her tongue. There’s a grassy smell to it but it seems lessened compared to the tea Levi used to make in his office, and though the fancy taste doesn’t really suit her, she finds herself liking the liquid, drinking it softly, never blowing the steam away. It warms her nose and just for that, she’s thankful. “So, what have you been up to, Mikasa?”

There’s a moment of pure silence where only Levi drinks down his tea, swallowing it slowly, letting the warm water slip down his cold throat. He watches with hawk-like eyes as Mikasa thinks her words through, her eyes roaming around the room, once again peeking at the articles adorning the walls. Her eyes dart quickly, never settling on any articles. Be it because she isn’t interested in any of them or because of the fact that she is too far to read the small letters, she never stops moving her eyes. They don’t stop on Hanji, not even for a split second, and Levi can guess how uncomfortable she is. She surely doesn’t know how to answer, not having a lot to say - and maybe she isn’t proud of how she lived, but she doesn’t show it, she just shows her uneasiness with the question. Hanji, seeming to get the idea pretty quickly, smiles again before putting her own tea cup down. It was filled with coffee not long ago, with added sugar to sweeten the taste, but it seems completely empty now.

“You don’t have to tell me, I get that,” he’s surprised by the way her voice is just above a whisper, her eyes looking down at the round cup she just had emptied. It’s rare to witness a calm Hanji and the older woman strangely seems saddened by something, a happening he hasn’t witnessed himself maybe, something she had to go through that he didn’t even know of. He’s traveled a lot during those five years and maybe, during those years of loneliness, she had to work on all the trauma that built deep withing her. But he doesn’t theorize more as the scientist smiles again, letting her gaze go up to Mikasa’s own intrigued ones. “Five years can seem long, right? Isn’t that strange how we fought for so long but it all seemed so short compared to only five years of peace. Time is unique in this way,” she’s starting to not make sense again, a thing she hasn’t done in the past months, and it might be Mikasa’s new presence that’s changing her again, taking her back to her old self. He suddenly wants to throw the younger woman out of the house if only he could flee from the words Hanji is about to spout. “I worked for humanity’s sake again. I made new discoveries, worked on the Marleyan technologies we stole. Photography, for example, has become an everyday thing. I still prefer painting personally, it feels more real, it has more meaning. It just is too easy to snap a picture and wait for it to develop. I love sitting for hours on end just for my portrait to be painted in such wonderful details.”

“You always talk the poor painter’s ears off,” Levi interrupts her, and though his tone is harsh there’s no malice hiding behind it, Hanji knows. “I had to pay the guy double the price because of that.”

“I cost you a lot, don’t I?” Hanji laughs eagerly, pushing her back against the sofa. The leather seems to melt around her form and she seems comfortable despite the unsteadiness of the piece of furniture. After sole minute of silence where Levi sips his tea and Mikasa stares at hers, Hanji lets her head fall back, her last eye closing, the other one covered by a black eye patch. Mikasa observes her more, paying close attention to the folds of the older woman’s skin under her chin, observing the wrinkles that have formed around her mouth, under her eyes, surely due to her really expressive smile. She looks like a mother, really, one Mikasa finds familiar. It’s maybe in the way she smiles or the way she looks at Mikasa with such a strange love, one she finds herself desiring. She scouts closer to the older woman, gulping down her tea. The warm liquid cascades down her throat, warming up her glands, her tonsils, vocal cords. Only moist crumples of leaves remain at the bottom of the cup, and when Mikasa swallows the rest of the tea, the sour leaves get stuck at the back of her throat. She clears her throat, bringing the attention of Hanji on her. The scientist smiles silently, Mikasa’s heart flusters. “You almost didn’t change, you know. You’re still as beautiful as before,” the older woman tells her sweetly, like a mother would to a long lost child. Mikasa’s eyes shine, Levi, and he suddenly finds himself intruding in this mother-daughter display. “You have more curves though, you look more like a woman, I’m glad you took care of yourself during those last years,”

And there, right there. It might have been Hanji’s smile or her hand on her cheek, her words that are neither wrong nor right, Levi’s silence yet loud presence, but Mikasa lets her heart shutters, right under Hanji’s fingers and Levi’s gaze. She lets a breath, shaky and weak, exit from between her parted lips, swollen due to the tea. A sob bubbles down in her core, deeply forming in her stomach. She feels it climbing up her trachea, tickling the back of her throat and, as it caresses her soft palate, strokes her hard palate, slips around her gum and her teeth, she lets it escapes from her lips. She sobs once, twice, Hanji stroking her cheek sweetly. She lets herself lean on Hanji’s shoulder, lets her arms fall down her side, puts her hands on the older woman’s thighs. She sobs quietly against the woman’s skin. The scientist strokes her back with careful hands and, when she looks at Levi through the black hair of the younger woman, she sees the man surprised, taken aback by such a display. He has let go of his cup, the liquid now cold, and he simply sits back in the chair, hands put on his lap. He looks at Hanji questionably, waiting for answers that never come, the scientist never uttering a word. She simply puts her chin against the crown of Mikasa’s head, waiting for her body to calm and quiet down.

It takes time, patience, and after a dozen of minutes, the woman has stopped shaking, quietly breathing deep in Hanji’s arms. She’s still awake, her eyes watching Hanji’s white shirt with a strange fascination. Levi has settled on waiting, observing the strong woman breaking little by little before calming down. It’s a strange thing, almost alienating the picture if the woman he had made of her long ago. She’s sensible, she’s hiding too much, she’s built a world of loneliness and isolation around her only for him to break it down so suddenly, without a warning. He feels guilty for some unknown reason, but he doesn’t regret getting her out of there, deeply rotting in the woods, a dead horse for company and the whistles of the wolves and the wind for a song. He had thought her gone for so long, dead maybe, eaten alive by guilt, trauma and worms. But he had heard of the lone cabin, old hunters crossing path with what they had called a nymph, a tall, slim and elegant one, with dark hair framing her pale face, black eyes reflecting the darkness of the woods she lived in. He had heard of the tale, first thinking of it as a simple legend but, thinking more, when they had depicted her beauty, her strange looks, her abnormal eyes, he had known. She wasn’t gone, she wasn’t dead, but she was letting herself be. So, truly, he doesn’t regret finding her deep in the woods. He doesn’t regret the travel, the requests he had to reject, the fatigue his old horse had to go through, the money he had to spend. She’s here, the strongest of them, almost as strong as him, the only one that could understand his struggles, his doubts and his lack of answers.

“Mikasa,” he says, surprising his own self when he murmurs so lightly, “you should lay down, sleep for a while. It will make you feel better. You have a job to do tomorrow,” he sees Hanji about to scold him but he just frowns at the woman, catching Mikasa’s gaze on him through Hanji’s arms. She’s fully listening to him. “And I’m a damn hard client to satisfy, you know.” She takes time to understand his words but when she does, she nods, narrowing her almond eyes at him. He sees gratefulness and determination, a new spike of light deep in her black eyes. The hunters were right, they really reflect the darkness of the woods she lived in.

“I will do my best,” her voice is hoarse as she stands up on wobbly legs. Hanji takes her elbow in her hands but Mikasa stays firm, standing tall in front of him. She seems so confident, all of a sudden, contrasting completely with the frail woman she was not minutes ago. She’s frowning but she isn’t scowling, her lips are pursed but not in displeasure. When she looks at him and when he looks back, it’s fire that ignite both of their stares. He sees back the soldier she was, about to slay the enemy without the ounce of a doubt, but she also seems so gentle, strangely so. She opens her mouth, parting her swollen lips and, as her voice slips from in between the soft and pink skin, Levi finds himself slightly shuddering, a jolt of electricity coursing down his spine, his legs, to the tip of his toes. “So don’t be gentle with me.” She’s defying him, he knows, and he should be irritated, but he feels proud of arousing such a reaction in her. Here she is, the brat he’s known for so long now.

“I won’t,” he defies back. He doesn’t stand, just looks up at her. She’s tall, taller than he remembers. But he isn’t intimidated in the slightest.

“Good.” Her voice is firm. She nods, he nods back, and just like that, Hanji leads her away, a smile of her own covering her face. When both of them are gone, Levi sighs, letting his head fall back. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply. “Insufferable woman.”

This time, it’s Levi that laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I gotta say, posting everything all at once is making me anxious, I have no idea why...


	7. Tremper la plume dans l'encre, dans le sang

The way she holds the pen, the travel of her fingers on the pen, the sound of her nails hitting the paper, Levi can easily guess that Mikasa is careful. She pays attention to the most uncertain of details, follows his words with caution, minding every little apostrophe, every insignificant coma. He wants to tell her to ignore his rant but, as he watches her write, her fingers still shaky, her wrist still unsure by times, he just keeps on telling his story for her to write on a letter he will surely never send. She eyes him up and down when he stops to think, quickly goes back to the paper when he opens his mouth. She’s faster than he thought she would be, her movements precise and clear, not clean and polished enough but there. At times he sees a curve that isn’t closed, a letter that isn’t tied, a dot that isn’t fully formed, capitals that are too small. He doesn’t slow down when she struggles but she doesn’t complain either, and when he talks lowly, just to bother her, she simply glares through her bangs and asks him, proud put aside, to _repeat, please_. During those moments he’s proud of himself for she finally learns some manners. He smirks at her but she doesn’t reciprocate the gesture, simply moving her hand to show him to keep talking. He goes on with his stories, telling anecdotes that never really happened and memories he can’t remember, surely because they aren’t his but someone else’s souvenirs. He just wants to push her to her limits, show her that this job she will do will be a hard one. She doesn’t complain when her wrist visibly hurts, and the more he speaks the less her handwriting is clean. The ink empties on the paper, she tuns the page around. They already are at three pages completely covered with ink and she has yet to make a single stain. Deep down he knows, he’s proud of her for learning so fast.

“I remember him asking me to hold his hand. It wasn’t anything special, just another expedition. But for the soldier it was, and he looked so scared and terrified, about to shit his pants, that wasn’t gracious. I think he had a girlfriend or something because the girl by his side wouldn’t stop pestering him about duties and respect of boundaries. She was hot-headed and she knew what she wanted. I remember her taking his hand and just galloping out through the gates. In the end she died first, loud mouths never lasted long in this field,” he stops a second when she gives him a questioning look, surely because she doesn’t know where he is going with that story. There is no moral for there is nothing to learn, nothing to get out of this, he’s just telling her what is going through his mind and what flashes in his eyes. He scoffs because, right at this moment, with her facing him still alive, she’s proving him wrong. He opens his mouth, she goes back to writing, tip of the pen hovering over the paper. “You and your brat friends were just exceptions. A different case. Surely you were more than lucky.” He’s trying to tease her, he knows, but when she isn’t writing anything on the paper and just looking down at a single drop of ink that slowly rolls down the steel tip of the pen, he knows he shouldn’t have said anything, just kept on telling his miserable stories.

“I wouldn’t call ourselves lucky, sir,” she murmurs. Her head is still down, her hand is still immobile above the paper and when the drop finally falls, staining the paper for the first time, she puts the pen down and lets her hands rest on her lap. She seems to take small breaths through her parted lips, exhaling them quickly. For a moment he thinks she’s hyperventilating, having some sort of horrid flashback going through her head – and he wouldn’t blame her, it’s already surprising enough that she doesn’t seem to have any kind of mental issues after what she went through – but he quickly guesses that she’s just preventing herself from lashing at him. But, really, she might just be thinking if the friends she lost and the sacrifices she made, because her eyes are darker than before and narrowed at the pen. “I wouldn’t say we had it worst, most of us survived when we all thought we would die. But when you truly think about it, Levi, don’t you think it would have been better for us to die on the battlefield?” She isn’t looking at him and as soon as she sighs, Levi takes back what he had thought not seconds ago. She’s struggling inside with feelings she hid for too long. With those words, her posture, her expression, the tone of her voice and the shakiness of her hands, Levi immediately knows that yes, just like everyone else that entered the Survey Corpse and that survived through the war, she is in fact struggling and suffering from silent demons, harder to fight than giant monsters. Maybe that is why she had let herself rot away from everyone else.

“That’s enough for now, Ackerman,” he stands up and she still isn’t looking at him. He takes the pages and reads them carefully. He’s surprised to see that her handwriting is readable and that her words are regularly separated, the space between each and every words clearly marked. He’s really proud of her and, when he puts the papers down and sits down, she looks up at him and waits for his critics. He simply nods. “That’s good. You’re good at it, Ackerman. Take the pen and some new paper, you’ll write a true letter.”

“Will we depart again or is someone coming?” He successfully diverted her thoughts away from her dark mind. He discreetly smiles.

“No, there’s someone I need to write to,” when he says this she tilts her head aside, cautiously looking at him. It feels intimate, the way her lips are pursed and her eyes are narrowed gently, surely trying to analyze him. “What are you waiting for? Get on with it. We don’t all day.”

“How so? Are we leaving again?”

“No, we’ll buy you more clothes. You’ll be free to do whatever you like with it. That’s if you haven’t lost the box already.” She shakes her.

“I still have it,” she simply answers and takes back the pen in her hand, new paper neatly put on the table. She positions herself, back straight and legs closed under the table, her forearms right on the edge of the table. When she tries the pen on a flying piece of paper by her side, she finds the pen emptied of blue ink. She opens the tube, taking the bottle of ink Levi is handing her. She pours the thick liquid in the tube and closes the small bottle, handing it back to Levi. When she tries the pen again, the ink is a dark red. She looks quizzically at him, he just shrugs. “Who should I write to?”

“Erwin Smith.” For a moment she stays still, looking at him through intrigued eyes. He thinks she’s pitying him and he’s about to snap at her but she just nods and writes down the name. He nods to no one and, taking a deep breath, he leans back and looks at her hands. “Put my thoughts into correct sentences. Not too emotional, I don’t want his rotted body to cry on me, understand?” She simply nods, head still looking down at the paper. He guesses she understands him easily, and he doesn’t have to explain more than that. At least she gets him and doesn’t try to pry. He takes another breath. He might have brought the idea but he suddenly feels naked in front of her. She’s not looking at him, she’s barely acknowledging his presence, his voice being the only useful thing in the work. He’s thankful for that. “You need to thank him for me. I can’t do that on my own. I hated him too much and for too long, I can’t thank him anymore now. He took me out of my pathetic life. Truly pathetic. I won’t say he saved me but he gave me some more years. I would have died sooner or later down there. Humans were more dangerous than titans. They were intelligent and heartless, the worst of mix, believe me on that,” he sees he nod, think and then write, always sin this order. She seems to think about her formulations, the words she’s writing. He just hopes he won’t be nonsense when he finally read it. “You see, I hated him so much at the beginning. I lost precious things, he took it away from me in a way. But the more I stayed at the surface, the less I found myself hating him. In a way, he gave me new hopes. I learned to desire new things. New foods, new clothes, new knowledge. Those weren’t useful and maybe too fancy for me, but I ended up desiring it anyway,” she throws a look at him, pushing him to keep on talking. He doesn’t let his eyes wander away from her frame, still tracing the movements of her hands. She looks back down, writes some more. He awaits a little then keeps on talking. “In a way, I ended up liking him more than I should have.”

“How?” She sounds professional, putting aside any judgmental thinking she might have. He just shrugs at her.

“Like two men in war that seemed endless.”

“That’s too vague,” she argues. This time she seems truly interested, but he just keeps on looking at her hands, shrugging. He sees her fingers twitch.

“Just write it as it is. Or don’t, that would be better.” He feels her eyes on him, carefully puzzling his words and his body language. After a moment she writes again. She seems sure about what she is writing, so he just leans back again and breathes deeply. “We fought together for so long. I truly thought we were going to end up dying the same day. Soldiers saw him as the devil, everyone saw him as that. And I did, too. That man, always throwing lives away. Maybe he was more heartless than me in the end. Each and every time I would ask him if he regretted any of his choices, he would always answer me negatively, and with such confidence. I was too proud, maybe, to see that he was just throwing his own life at the same time. When I told him to die for me, for humanity’s sake, he accepted so easily. He was maybe more suicidal than your brother.” He scoffs and looks up, leaving her hands to look at her face. She’s writing carefully, tracing the letters with the utmost attention. Her curves are prettier than they were before, her dots are full, her comas are straight. She’s writing what he tells her and she’s changing it at the same time. He breathes, still watching over her. She seems truly interested for she’s leaning a bit more on the table, her elbows almost touching the wood, her breasts hovering over the table. When the door opens behind her she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pay attention to who just intruded the intimacy of their session. Hanji nods silently, Levi simply nods back. The older woman leans against the door frame, letting cold air invade the room. “I just wish he were still there, sometimes,” it feels more like a therapy session now, her carefully listening to him, taking notes, writing it down on paper. Hanji observes silently. When she looks down he knows she feels the same. “He might have been the devil for so long but he shouldn’t have died like that,” if Mikasa feels guilty she doesn’t show it. “He could have at least explained what went through that stupid brain of his when he sacrificed so much soldiers for one giant monkey I couldn’t even kill.” He crosses his arms and his legs, fully leaning back on the chair. The wood cracks under him. She stops writing, waits for him to talk more. He simply shakes his head. “Just end it there. Tell him I’m grateful. That should be enough.”

Mikasa nods, writes some more sentences before signing for him. He’s about to take the letter but Hanji takes it from Mikasa’s hands and reads it. They both wait silently as the older woman reads through the elegantly written words. As her single eye trails through the paper it becomes moist, narrowing with each new letter. After some quiet and tensed time the older woman nods, folding the letter in three equal parts. She hands the paper to Levi, meeting his gaze. He sees her glad, content.

“You shouldn’t give it to him,” she tells. Mikasa flinches at that but keeps quiet, the conversation not including her anymore. “He will cry, that’s for sure.”

Levi takes the letter, reads it silently. Hanji hovers over him, reading the letter again from above his shoulder. He can hear her sniffle. Once he finishes he folds it back, never meeting Mikasa’s wondering gaze. He puts the later on the table, far from him.

“He deserves to cry Hanji. I’ll bring it to him later.” She nods, laughing at his words. Mikasa arches an eyebrow, tilting her head a little. He just nods at her. She nods back. That’s what they do best. Understand each other without a word.

The afternoon, when they go and buy Mikasa some more clothes, he escapes through the crowd and throws the letter away. Erwin doesn’t have a grave, just like the many soldiers that died on that tragic day. Levi imagines him crying nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, if you want to comment on my lack of professionalism, you can do it. I kow I'm not professional in any single way... I don't even know if I'm writing the word "professional" correctly too be honest. You can be mad at me, I would understand. Most of the time, I'm mad at my self too!


	8. Que ma langue reste immobile

Around a week later, long days of travel behind them, Mikasa finds herself standing at the door of an unfamiliar house. The house is isolated, way behind the walls of Rose where they had last officially stopped. They had gone through harsh winds and desolated woods, deserted battlefields and unfamiliar colonies, small ones with not enough citizens to be counted as one, too small to be marked on a new map. The house was small, with only a ground level, had one or two windows, and a dirty single door. The atmosphere around was restful, calmer than the cities they went through and the small colonies they crossed path with. Levi had told her that the man, though too old to work anymore, had been a representative of the military police, way before it became corrupted. Once the military had become too corrupted, too absorbed in political empowerment and greed, he had left with nothing but regret and remorse, leaving behind his life, his wife, and the sole daughter he ever had. Mikasa had felt pity at first, but the man was now too old to feel the same. Levi had explicitly told her to not feel any kind of compassion for the man. She had wondered why but he had never answered her. In the long week of travel to the farther land still colonized, they had spoken short and simple conversations, ones that could only had filled the void of companionship. And now here they were, dirty and cold, standing in front of the sole house around, with nothing but a small luggage for the both of them. Mikasa badly wanted to take a warm bath and to eat meat and fresh vegetables. But with no garden in sight, she had quickly given up on the latter. And she doubted that the old man hunted. If he were too old to stand, he would also be to old to hold a bow and an arrow.

During their travel, Levi had told her that the job was a requested one, chosen especially for her. The old man had heard of her feats and exploits, had heard of her strong musculature, of the way she held her swords and the way she slayed monster after monster in the blink of an eye without blinking herself. He had heard of the strong and determined soldier but also of the elegant and delicious oriental in all her beauty and glory and just for that, for the way he had, in his small letter requesting her, described in many erotic ways her body and her stance, she had lost all the pity she had felt. She knew the eyes of men, young and old, and she had decided a long time ago to not answer to such vile thoughts. So here, now knocking on the old wooden door, she just wishes for the job to be done. A bath could come later and a proper meal could be eaten in a proper place.

She knocks once but no answer is heard. She knocks again and again, still lightly tapping as to not make a ruckus. She hears, after a moment, the sound of wheels on the ground from right behind the door and it finally opens slowly, hauntingly so. She awaits for the man to appear and, once the door is wide open, takes in his appearance.

He’s pathetic and miserable, she sees, and she quickly comes to terms that the man will not create any problems. He’s weak, even when sitting on a wheelchair. He trembles down to his core, shakes like a dying leaf. His hands are covered in old stains, proof of his age, and the veins in his arms are visible from afar, it would almost seem like someone drew them with really vivid ink. His eyes are falling, his skin seems to melt under layers after layers of wrinkles. The man will die soon, she guesses, seeing how even breathing is a chore for him. But just as Levi taught her – and the man is right behind her, she doesn’t want to be reprimanded – she bows, taking the folds of her skirt and, head down, she softly speaks, loud enough for him to hear.

“Hello, sir. I am Mikasa, your requested courier, here to write down your thoughts in the finest of letters,” she stands up straight again, red on the ears, still not used to such manners. She feels ashamed in a way to bow in front of people, a thing she never did. But Levi insists. The man bows on his chair, loosing some of his balance. When Mikasa goes to catch him he just smiles behind old chapped lips, his eyes traveling the length of her arms down to her hidden thighs. She lets go of him quickly. “Shall we get on with it now”

“Of course, but take your time here, settle down. A tea is brewing just for you, young lady. For the young sir, too.” She doesn’t know what to do for a second. Laugh at the fact that he just called Levi young or be surprised by his clear voice, eloquent and direct. Though he seems frail and dying, his voice tells her the contrary. “Come in, it must be cold.”

She enters, lets the small luggage fall by the side of a strangely clean sofa. From her coat she draws her pen and clean paper, putting it neatly in front of her on a round table. Levi silently comes to sit by her side, not too close but close enough to hide her calves from the old man. When she looks at him he seems on edge, watching over her like a hawk defending its nest, piercing the gaze of the older man. She wonders why, and when she thinks more about it she remembers the way Levi had seemed to despise the man. He didn’t tell her his reasons but she stays cautious.

The man goes around the man, pushing the wheelchair with a solid enough branch. He settles in front of them, three cups on his lap. He puts them slowly on the table and, in one of them, he slips two round pills, white as snow. She doesn’t ask, merely watches and waits for him to be ready. Levi doesn’t seem to touch the tea so neither does she.

“Are you all ready, my dear?” Mikasa nods, the man nods back, his head shaking much more than surely intended for he winces silently. He drinks a bit of his tea, watches with old eyes the two tea cups left untouched. He seems to understand, strangely. Mikasa is curious but doesn’t ask about the man. “Good, good. You seem efficient. See, when I first heard of you, it was on a small piece of paper, one I had found on the ground, completely covered in dirty footprints. I was younger, I could still stand. How strange, you see? Those were old days, it seems so far away. I got old, lost everything, and though on purpose...” He looks up at her through the hair of his eyebrows, sees of she awaits still, sees how she seems so impatient and patient at the same time. He shakes his head and again, it seems as weak as a bubble. “Excuse my lack of manners, I seem to lose my mind as fast as my time. Let’s get on with it so you can bath. I did request for only a day now, didn’t I?” He looks at Levi and the man nods formally. He nods again. “Very well. Ready your pen, dear. It won’t be long for you but it will for me.” Mikasa merely nods, readying her position.

“I man ready sir.”

“Good.” He clears his throat. A time. “See, the letter is for my sole daughter,” Mikasa jerks her head towards Levi at that, but the man just clenches his jaw. She goes back to the paper. “Make my words sweet and loving, I want her to remember me as strong and young, not as the old man that left her alone with her mother.” Mikasa nods. A time. The man thinks. Another time. “You see, I loved her more than her mother. More than that, even, I couldn’t see her as a daughter but more as a beautiful and young lady, one so elegant and pretty, with curves that could never end, even in her young age.” Mikasa gulps, swallowing nothingness. She slowly feels her guts churning. She hopes, for a moment, that what she will hear and what she will have to write down isn’t what she thinks. “I loved her. Her mother never appreciated that and, though she stayed, she never talked to me or our daughter. So I loved my beautiful daughter for the both of us and even more. She must be such a beautiful flower now,” his voice shakes a little and, as she writes down elegant wordings for his disgustingly sweet words, she feels a disgusting feeling growing down her stomach. When she looks up at Levi he’s watching her, carefully detailing her with careful and patient eyes. She silently asks and he just shakes his head. He leans towards her, almost putting his lips against her ear.

“Do not ask any question. Write down his words and shut up. The sooner we get out the better it is,” he leans back on the sofa, and she can see disgust in his eyes. She nods and goes back to the paper. A time. A disgusting time.

“We never married but she bore my love nonetheless. I made her happy.” Mikasa gags. The man, seeing her discomfort, brings her her teacup closer. She still doesn’t touch it, barely able to stand the sight of the man. He nods. “I understand but please, listen to me. What is blood, really, except a thicker liquid than water? Both can be drained. And isn’t love better than ignorance and hatred? I loved her when her mother couldn’t. Wouldn’t, even. I asked her her consent and she gave it to me. We loved each other. We never made it official, we knew the limits and, truly, who are you to judge?” There isn’t any malice in his voice, merely any acknowledgment. He speaks for himself, only for his own sake. She wonders if he truly needs the letter to be sent. “I never killed, but in the papers that told your tells, your victories, your glories, I saw it. The lack of fear, of empathy, from a woman so beautiful. I never killed and, instead of staying selfish, I left her to her own life, one where she would meet a man her age. You see, my dear,” there’s a time, a moment that passes by, where the man seems to suffocate on his own voice. She wonders if he regrets loving his own daughter or leaving her. “You see, as long as a love is reciprocated, isn’t it enough? My daughter deserved more than just a father, she deserved love and respect, admiration even. She deserved the world,” the man isn’t vicious, the man isn’t villainous. He seems so calm, so innocent, Mikasa badly wants to clean her stomach and clean her thoughts from the words that plague her head. “And so I gave her the world, even for just a moment. I made her happy like no one could. So write down with fancy words and clean letters how much I loved her. She will know. She will know how I loved her like she knew before. Write my admiration, my love, as a father and as a lover. I gave her the world she deserved.” And, right there, Mikasa does. Her handwriting stays clean but her wrist shakes, her fingers frail against the paper. There’s a stain on her thumb, there’s a stain on the letter. She simply hides it under a word of love. Inside, she tears the paper apart. “And then just tell her my goodbyes. In another life, I strongly believe, we will love each other as lovers without dreading the bound of blood and judgment.”

A time. She writes it down silently. Another time. A moment. She folds the paper in three equal parts, passes it to him. She keeps her strong eyes on his but keeps her mouth shut. Her tongue stays still and though she wants to scream she keeps quiet. The man takes the letter, read it carefully, slowly. He squints, it seems, but he folds the paper back and pushes himself away from the table. He rolls around the table and goes by her side. Mikasa stands up, pen still strongly in hand. She feels Levi’s hand on the small of her back, silently stopping her from lashing out. She calms down. His hand remains on her.

“Thank you, truly,” the man thanks her, catching her hands in his. He shakes them vividly though shakily. He seems so grateful, so contempt, and Mikasa, just for a moment, a moment she hates, forgets about his words. She sees the eyes of a man that doesn’t regret but understands. She nods, keeping her distance. “I know your thoughts, my dear. I know your opinions, I know them by heart. But truly, just understand. Or don’t, just listen. I loved her and she loved me. Isn’t enough? True love is too hard to find in this merciless and cruel world. I gave her love and she gave it back.” He nods again and leads them away. Mikasa and Levi silently follow one by the other’s side. Once at the door, stomach full of something disgusting, Mikasa sighs a breath of relief. As she exits, ready to take the letter with her to send it, the old man keeps it with him. He puts it against his heart and gives her her pay instead. It’s more than they had asked. “I will keep the letter. She became so upset when I left, I don’t want her to remember me anymore. She might have found a better suited man to love her back. I just hope he gives her as much love I gave her.” With that he thanks her again and closes the door. Again, it hauntingly closes.

They depart as soon as possible. Mikasa climb without a words behind Levi on the horse. She presses her hands on his hips and, as fast as the wind, she suffocates. For a moment everything but the sound of the horse and the whistle of the wind is silent. But at some point – it might have been a minute later, an hour or a whole day – Levi turns his head towards her and softly speaks, voice carried by the wind.

“I won’t be the hardest of clients, Mikasa. I brought that on you but you can leave, if you want. It will complicate everything but I will understand.” Mikasa thinks for a time. A time again. It’s nothing but time that passes between them.

“How could you stay so calm?” A time. He thinks his words through, she guesses. Or maybe he, too, suffocates on the wind.

“I couldn’t,” he simply states after a while. “I simply forced my tongue to remain still. This is how it will work now. You’ll have to stay silent through the hardest and saddest of stories. You might feel disgusted, sympathetic, exhausted, miserable, lost, joyful, but you’ll have to remain silent through everything. Your fingers will speak, not you.” He thinks again. His silence clears her mind, she presses her hands harder around his hips. She’s confronted with a dilemma she never thought of before. Love is such a complicated thing, one she will surely never understand. “Just write. After a while, every story will seem like a new one, one you’ll want to hear despite the context and who tells it. Rich or poor, clever or stupid, mighty or weak, man or woman, child or adult, you will see that every person is human inside. And trust me, Mikasa,” he isn’t looking at her, he just puts pressure on one of her hands. She feels his warmth on her. It might have only been just more than a week that he found her but she already thinks of him as familiar. “Humans might be the worst of creatures, but they still deserve to be heard.”

Peace really softened them both. She hates it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I don't think it's interesting in any single way, but if you want to know, here's a list of songs I listened to while writing these at the library:  
-Stay Still My Tongue (an OST I found while searching for background music)  
-Saphir, by Pomme  
-On brûlera, by Pomme  
-Tempt You, by Nothing But Thieves  
-and surely other french songs I'm forgetting. Sorry, but yeah, I love Pomme, you should listen to her songs.


	9. Amour, au pluriel, devient féminin

She thinks of her horse. She thinks of its decayed body, of its eaten flesh and its dry blood. She thinks of its empty eyes and its cries of pain during the coldest nights. She thinks of its frail limbs, its visible ribs, its almost always empty stomach. She thinks of its dirty fur, its yellowed teeth, its cracked tongue. She thinks of her horse and how she would have wanted to treat it differently. Giving it a name would have been a great start, she thinks. Then, feeding it everyday with the right amount of food, hay and clean grass, proper water and maybe a bit of salt to reward it. Sugar cubes if she had some, an apple of two, a wild carrot, some lettuce. She would have rode it every day down to the river not far from her old cabin. She have have let it wander far, let it meet maybe stray horses, she remembers hearing some one summer night. Maybe it would have fled but at least it would have been happy to live a life of luxury, luxurious enough for an animal like that at least. She would have missed it, she thinks, had she been more attached to it. But her heart wasn’t in the right place, neither was her mind, and she thinks of what a horrible person she is, as she watches a young child calmly caress the white and clean fur of a tall horse.

The child, from what she heard not minutes ago, just celebrated her tenth birthday. She would have congratulated her but the child was shy, more timid than any child she’s ever seen, and congratulating someone for just getting older isn’t something Mikasa finds necessary. A quickly given gift is already too much for her. So she had just nodded at the information when the grandmother had told her.

“She’s really elegant and eloquent for a child her age. She knows how to talk to adults in conventions, she knows how to behave and she really pays attention to her manners, so please, accept my apologies. She can get shy around strangers when they come into our house,” the old lady bows in front of them, leaning a bit more on the green and round table they’re gathered around. Mikasa touches her strawberry cake with her fork, ignoring Levi’s side glance he throws her way. He had told her to behave again, but she doesn’t have any appetite.

“Everything is fine, it’s a child,” Levi reassures the grandmother. He doesn’t put any tone in his voice but he puts gesture, and his hand isn’t hesitant as he pats her sagged shoulder. The old lady smiles, and Mikasa sees Levi as, once again, a different person.

After the first request from the old man and his more than questionable love to his daughter, they had traveled back to the city to meet another request. Levi had told her about the demand they had received. An old lady, about to pass away, requesting for a series of letters to be sent to her family, all scattered around the walls, some beyond. He had reassured her that they wouldn’t send it on their own and she had sighed at that. At least, she would just have to write, not to play postmen.

“Thank you my dear,” the grandmother sighs as she sits straighter on her rocking chair. But the chair doesn’t move, and Mikasa wonders if it’s because she doesn’t have the strength to rock it or if the chair is just too old to move. The old lady looks at Mikasa now, watching her face with a renewed attention. Mikasa picks at the cake, puts a small portion of it in her mouth. The strawberry mousse melts on her tongue, invading her taste buds with a sweet and fruity taste, rich and full. Mikasa finds it easy to swallow it. “What a clear skin you have, darling. So white and bright, just like the moon. It almost seems transparent, it’s like I can see right through you,” her voice, though shaky, is as clear as day, and it reminds Mikasa of Hanji and this warm and familiar feeling that floods through her whole body. Levi shakes his head, looking at her with warning eyes, but Mikasa just raises an eyebrow at it. She wasn’t planning on insulting or spitting back at the kind old lady just for a compliment. “And your eyes, how delicate. You must take great care of yourself. I used to be as pretty as you when I was younger. Always paying attention to my skin, my hair, putting on makeup just to please the boys my age. It paid off, I met the most intelligent and gorgeous man in the city. We hooked up, grew together, became better persons. We built the family we both dreamed of. But time always comes back when you least expect it, and my beauty faded as soon as I blinked. How ridicule. When he left I learned to never put on such a show again. Men fade when beauty does,” though her words could seem regretful her voice isn’t and her eyes smile at Mikasa. The old lady laughs a little before coughing. The young child turns around, looks carefully at her grandmother. The grandmother nods at her, waves. The child turns back around, strokes the horse more. “My grand daughter will be beautiful, too. A beauty like no other. Her mother was such a gem, the most exquisite of treasure. The sun could not blind us. She was prettier than the sky itself, and the stars seemed to fade when by her side. She had such a beauty, such a natural elegance, nothing could compare.”

“Should we write to her as well?” Levi asks her when she takes a moment to breathe. The old lady laughs before looking at him through sad eyes.

“I will not pay you to write for the dead, only for the ones still alive,” she dismisses him quickly when Levi is about to apologies. Mikasa puts her now empty plate aside and takes her pen and paper in hand, putting it on the table. The old lady turns her way, watches her hands play with the pen. As Mikasa fills the pen with new black ink, the old lady smiles. “Are you so eager to hear me speak? I have many tales for you but not so many people to write to. It will be long letters. Do you want to start now?” Mikasa nods. “Good, the sooner the better. Olésya will get tired of playing with the horse at one point. She might love him but she quickly gets tired of just stroking his fur. He’s already clean to the bone, the poor animal,” she laughs, and Mikasa looks around at the child. Olésya, it seems to be her name, is stroking the same spot of fur again and again with a patience she thought impossible before. The horse doesn’t seem bothered and the child seems to like doing it. She wonders, for a moment, what her voice sounds like, but she turns around again to face the old lady. She seems deep in thought, surely wondering whom to write first to. She nods to herself, taking another cake. It’s orange, it might taste of peach. The mousse wiggles as she puts it in her plate. She reaches for another piece then, a green one, and puts it in Levi’s plate. He nods at her silently and puts his small fork in it, cutting smoothly through the pastel green mousse. Mikasa guesses it tastes like pistachio.

“Who should I write to?” She asks, tip of the pen hovering above the top of the paper.

The lady tells her about her son. An old man in his sixties named Géride. He never married, never founded a family. He settled beyond the walls once the war had ended. From what Mikasa hears he had enrolled in the garrison to live a peaceful life without feeling guilty about it. He was a coward, she tells simply. Mikasa writes his name on the paper and waits for the old lady to continue.

She tells her all about her regrets, her thoughts on how she raised him. How she would have wanted to make him a better man, one she wouldn’t have been ashamed of. But she tells her, too, about the unconditional love she feels when she thinks of him in the darkest of nights, how she wishes to go back and hold him tighter during his nightmares, to tell him how proud she had felt when he had walked for the first time. She tells her tales of a single mother, one that fought for her children and one that loved without ever showing it, never enough, she thinks. She tells her all about the clothes she sewed for him, the toys she built, the schoolbags she had to buy and that she had watched him decorate alone on the kitchen table. When she tells her about the many regrets she holds Mikasa elegantly writes it down for the son to read, and she wonders if he will cry like his mother does right in front of her. She wonders if the man is a good one, wonders if what the grandmother is telling her isn’t just something she built to herself. The man had left as soon as he had turned eighteen without a single look at her, and Mikasa wonders if the man is even still alive. The old lady seems to think so, telling her how strong he always was, how healthy he used to be as a child. She tells her about the birthdays she throws alone, without him to blow the candles out. It’s the thoughts of a single mother that Mikasa writes down, ones that the now old and passive woman never forgot. Mikasa writes it all down, never ignoring the way the voice of the old lady shakes and trembles or the way the cake seems to dry on the plate. She coughs when she finishes and Mikasa simply writes down her vows, wishing to the man to _have a great life, with love, your mother_. She folds the letter and hands it to Levi. He reads through it with careful eyes and nods, handing it then to the old lady. She doesn’t read it, just puts it in a box by her side.

Mikasa takes another sheet of paper. The old lady speaks again and, just like that, the day passes by.

By the end of it there is only so few papers left. Mikasa’s wrist hurts and her smallest finger is covered in dry ink, but she still writes what the old lady says. She seems tired, completely drained from any life she had the morning, but she keeps on talking. The cake is still there, her fork still untouched. Levi listens patiently, watching the old lady with narrowed eyes. Sometimes, he looks at Mikasa, watches the way her fingers dance on the paper, the travel of the pen, the fluid lines of the ink. His eyes then travel to Mikasa’s face and she wonders, then, what he thinks of her. If he sees her as a woman or as a used soldier, if he fully understands her or if he just quickly gets it. But he tries to ignore it, the way her thoughts turn his way, the way her dark eyes, sometimes, look into his own gray ones. She puts the shuffle of her hart back in her mind and concentrates on the many tales the old lady tells her to write down. The night is dark, cold, and the candles are almost all melted. Their light is frail but it’s sufficient, Mikasa keeps on writing, the shadows of her fingers playing on the paper.

When the voice of the old lady stops, raspy sound gone, Mikasa looks up. She’s leaning back, melted like the candles on the unmoving rocking chair. Her eyes are closed, her lips are chapped and trembling with every intake of breath. Mikasa tells her to rest but the old lady just shakes her head.

“I have one last letter and then I will go and rest. Only then,” she breathes weakly, her throat whistling. Levi hands her a glass of water and she drinks it down slowly, very slowly. Mikasa waits but, when her hand travels back down to take her pen, small and smooth fingers are already playing with it. Mikasa follows the hand to see the young child, Olésya, looking at her with bigger eyes than a doll. She’s truly beautiful, she thinks.

“Will nanny soon go to sleep? She is too tired to continue.” Her voice is calm, seemingly innocent, but when she glances down, teary eyes digging holes onto Mikasa’s embroidered blue dress, Mikasa sees right through her innocent and calm self. She nods.

“Soon, don’t worry,” the young girl leans against Mikasa’s shoulder, all traces of innocence gone. She softly whimpers against her blouse, taking a handful of the cloth. Mikasa lets her fingers traces through her long blond and wavy hair, nails scratching her scalp. They settle on her frail back, feeling her spine under her digits. The child isn’t timid anymore, she thinks, as she sobs silently in her dress. When Mikasa looks up quickly she sees the old lady resting a little, taking back her breath. Levi is looking at her, unreadable. Mikasa looks down again at the child by her side.

“I don’t want her to rest now,” she sobs quietly,” I don’t want her leave me. Nights are scary without her. Nanny can’t leave.” She sobs more and more, soaking Mikasa’s clothes. Mikasa holds her against her, letting her sit on her lap. The child puts her arms around Mikasa’s waist, lets her head fall on Mikasa’s shoulder. Her tears wet her neck, her skin getting colder and colder by the minutes. The wind is slow but it’s there, as cold as ever, and the child shakes under her. Mikasa hesitantly puts her arms around her. “If you stop writing she will rest. Never stop, please. She has many things to say, listen to her and write it down. I don’t want her to rest and I don’t want you to stop.” A sudden pain pinches at Mikasa’s heart and she holds the child tighter against her. The ruffles of her white dress tickle her legs.

“Olésya, sweetheart,” the child turns around abruptly as her grandmother speaks softly. Her green eyes open widely, her pink lips quivering as the old woman coughs again. Cheeks flushed, the young child listens carefully, tears streaming down her face. “What I will write down, you will hear, and you will keep. It is for you that I speak now, only for you.” She coughs again, Mikasa takes the pen and paper, leaning down slightly, her arms still around the girl. She puts the tip of the pen down against the paper, writing Olésya’s name with beautifully shaped cursive letters. Levi watches with full attention.

And then again, the old woman speaks. It all sounds new, so beautiful. Her voice seems renewed of energy, her throat still raspy but her voice strong and loud through the dark night. The small child in Mikasa’s arms doesn’t shakes anymore as she listens, her eyes glued on her grandmother’s figure. Mikasa writes down everything that is said, writing the words raw and natural, not choosing to turn her words into other sentences. The old woman tells everything, from her oldest memories about the infant to her strongest feelings, and it’s so raw, so honest, the love of a mother, a grandmother, a nanny, everything that it can be. The child doesn’t speak, just listens. Mikasa does the same, only writing. It lasts longer again, her words waltzing in the dead of the night only to settle down like ink on paper. It’s a new love, one Mikasa had yet to listen to, that is told through her every words. The old lady speaks truth and love, regrets and contentment, souvenirs and old stories. It’s all the memories of an old person, one that will die soon, leaving behind a child that isn’t even hers but that she loved as much as she could. When her voice dies, being slowly lifted by the wind, the young child bursts in tears and runs to her. The old lady holds her with all the strength she has left, crying herself.

“I love you, my child. I love you.” The child cries harder, her small arms holding her grand

Mikasa folds the letter and puts it in the box by the old lady’s side. She goes to talk but Levi cuts her off, taking her forearm. He shakes his head and makes her stand up. He leads her away, walking with her through the dark night. They enter the old lady’s house, climb the stares and enter the room she gave them for the night. Silently, he undresses and goes under the sheets, laying down. Mikasa doesn’t follow, staying put at the door frame. Though it is dark she guesses Levi’s eyes on her. For a long moment they both stay silent, unmoving.

“Will it always be like that?” She whispers finally. She lets the night bring her words to him. She hears him move.

“I told you before, didn’t I? This line of work, it might be more complicated than anything you’re ever done before.” Mikasa moves, undresses in only a white and think dress. She lips under the covers, far enough from him to not touch him but close enough to feel his warmth. “There are so many different stories you will hear. They might be about the war, they might not. People all have different lives.”

He stays silent after that, and something seems to shift again in Mikasa. She feels raw emotions, new feelings emerge. Her life changes and her mind does, too. She sees something anew, something different. In the dark she sees it, the way her life has changed in the last two weeks. _He_ has changed it, she thinks. _He_ has given her a new purpose, a new chance. And, as her eyes slip close, she silently thanks him for that.

Peace really softened them. She learns to like it, in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other day I tried writing smut, and let's just say it didn't turn out great. I've never written smut before, and I want to write some for this fic, but I'm incapable of writing it without making it too romanticized and sweet when I want to make it rough to fit the story's atmosphere. One day, I'll succeed at writing smut, I swear.


	10. Le printemps était doux

As the weeks pass, Mikasa discovers new and completely different stories. From anecdotes to complete and utter imagination, she learns to listen and understand despite being from an entirely different world it would seem. Levi had been right, people, deep down, are all the same. They might be vile, vicious, ignorant or strangely happy, they all seem to have the same kind of emotion and feeling in them, one Mikasa always had, too: love. From questionable love to emotional one, from lovers to simple friends, she learns to accept that people view the same world differently, different point of views she has to learn and to take into consideration. And, just like Levi told her, it’s the pen that talks, never her. Though her opinions have softened since the first time she had to write, she keeps them to herself, never speaking out of line or out of turn. She hears and she listens, she understands and she writes down in poetic sentences the words that are said. She learns and never stops doing so, Levi seems to be proud. He seems attached to her, too, in a way she never thought he would be. She might be attached to him too, a new bond strengthening with every new client they meet, and she wonders, sometimes, if they might not be creating their own kind of love, one forged from death and bad memories, multiple traumas and shining new hope. She never despairs anymore and learns to accept the peace, learns to accept their softened hearts and thoughts. She doesn’t find her fingers bloody and doesn’t wake up from a nightmare anymore. Winter passes, spring settles all around them and finally, Mikasa becomes a new person, one that doesn’t think of dead horses and gargantuan teeth crushing her skull.

“You might want to show a smile, Mikasa, this one’s going to be all around the walls.”

She squints in Levi’s direction and sighs heavily. Levi stands in front if her, straightening her skirt with agile fingers. He taps the rebel folds and covers the wrinkles of the cloth, makes sure her hair is away from her face. But the light wind keeps ruining his work and he groans when a stray bang tickles her eye. He goes to hide it away behind her ear but Mikasa beats him to it, letting her slim fingers stroke his before brushing her hair away. He stands there for a second too long before backing away, admiring his handy work. When Mikasa looks down at her dress she nods a little.

“Can you see the embroidery of the shirt from where you stand?” She asks him after a short moment. He backs up again and nods. Then, he turns towards the man standing behind the big camera and, tilting his head, he asks him the same question. The man hides behind a large black drape and, for a second, he doesn’t move. Finally he pushes the cloth away and nods. Mikasa sighs, pushing back her straw hat. “Good, that’s all I care about.” Levi shakes his head.

“It’s not the embroidery that matters, Mikasa, it’s your face. Clients want to see your face.”

“And why does it matter? Is it my face that writes or my fingers?” She scoffs when Levi just shakes his head again. He comes nearer to push her shoulder down, making her relax in the warm touch.

“It’s easier to get clients when they know what you look like,” he tells her without looking at her, organizing the many jewels around her neck. She doesn’t like the sensation of heavy stones on her skin, it seems too proper and luxurious for her. They dig onto her flesh and mark her skin like knives. She doesn’t move her neck at all because of them, and her movements seem mechanical. Hanji had just told her she seemed like a more trustworthy person with jewelry adorning her pale skin and Mikasa had trusted her, unfortunately. “Some people still see you as a beast from the war.”

“They should pay for a prostitute if they want a pretty face that much. Picture or not they will be disappointed in the end.” He frowns her way but doesn’t say anything. They stay silent after that, him only arranging her cloths and necklace, waiting for the other man to be ready.

“Your words are what should matter, but people stay scared even in a time of peace. Let them have it, it is all that matters.” She nods, ignoring the feeling of heavy stones around her skin. He backs away, throwing one last look at her before approaching the camera. He talks to the man, small words being whispered too far from her to hear, and when he turns around, a small smile covers his lips. “Say put, it will take some time, but everything is ready.” She straightens her back, standing tall some feet away from the camera, a blossomed tree behind her. From what she understood the camera doesn’t capture colors but she insisted on standing against the tall tree. The beauty of it was simply mesmerizing and she wanted something to look good in the picture, at least. She hears a click loud enough to make birds fly away. “Smile.” She doesn’t.

There was a saying, a legend that ran around the walls now, that taking a picture, as they called it, meant imprisoning your soul in a small piece of paper. Sell it, stick it to a wall, offer it to a loved one. One click of the heavy machine, one picture taken, and your soul was gone. Mikasa couldn’t believe in that, it seemed too unreal, but it might have been because she never asked for her picture to be taken. Dressing up nicely with elegant and refined cloths, standing still from ten minutes to ten hours depending on the quality desired and the machine used, all while smiling constantly, it seemed too much of an effort, and Mikasa never found solace in the fancy idea. But now, standing outside in the warm weather, sun hitting her face with rage through the new pink blossoms, her hands glued together in front of her and her face forced to stay relaxed, she fears this machine she never witnessed before, in front of which she never stood. It’s big, it’s heavy, she can’t see the man behind the giant cubicle, hidden behind heavy steel and a large black drape to hide him from the light. When faced with unknown, Mikasa looses her strength, her levelheadedness and her patience. She doesn’t know what it will look like in the end, and she doesn’t want her soul to be taken from her. Not after what she went through.

Minutes pass by without a word. She only moves her eyes to observe the people passing by, watching the machine with wonder and enjoying the warmth of the day. She hears children and laughs from afar, watches couples smiling and elders enjoying a day out. She lets her eyes wander around, lets her pupils grow under the sunlight. When she looks at the camera again she sees Levi standing right by it, throwing a precise gaze her way. Their eyes meet and, when her heart flutters, she blames the warmth making her dizzy. She doesn’t look away, he doesn’t either, like a challenge none of them wants to back away from. When he smiles a little she smiles back just as much, and she thinks she sees him getting awkward for a second, blinking under the light before scratching his neck with trembling fingers. She smiles in victory before looking back at the camera. A flash blinds her and, finally, the man pushes the drape away from him.

“All done. There’s some work to do again but you won’t need to be here, you’re free to go,” he says as Levi hands him a good amount of money. He counts quickly before putting it away. Levi bows him goodbye before walking to Mikasa. When he talks to her it’s with a condescending tone, one that mocks her with a strange kindness.

“See, it didn’t end up being torture. You ought to stop complaining like a brat,” here he is again, the Levi she always knew. She smiles, pushing him away with a firm push before sighing. He hands her a small bottle of water and she gulps it down. “He will send the final product to Hanji.”

“Why not to us? I want to see what I suffered for,” he scoffs and Mikasa just grins when she sees his impatient look. But when he calms down and just looks up at her with an unreadable look on his face, she keeps quiet and waits for his next words. He doesn’t seem too hesitant, just seems to analyze her own silent thoughts. Under the new blossoms, silence stretching as far as it can between the two of them, Mikasa feels a new kind of tension growing, one that isn’t unfamiliar but that isn’t welcomed nonetheless. She knows what it is, she isn’t ignorant. But she tries to hide the way her cheeks blush, the way her eyes narrow at him, the way her heart speeds up momentarily.

“We won’t be here when it arrives,” he simply says. The spell is broken and the blossoms fall again around them, time has taken back its natural flow.

“Where will we be?” She asks, curiosity as loud as the children playing around. He doesn’t look at her but she sees a small smirk plying on his lips.

“We will be out of the walls, way past wall Maria,” she tries to understand the meaning of his words but when he doesn’t elaborate, leading her instead to Hanji’s house, she lets go of his arm and stops. He turns around towards her and, silently, they both contemplate each other.

Her skirt floats with the wind is the first thought that crosses his mind. Her skirt floats and lets everyone see the beauty of her legs, the paleness of her skin, the scars that adorn every part of her flesh. Her skirt floats with the wind, her straw hat trembles under it, her hair waltzes along, framing perfectly her pale and clear face. Her eyes, narrowed down to small and thin almonds, look determinedly at him, awaiting for his next words. Her lips are parted, letting her breathe through the warm air, and a petal of blossom sticks to her right cheek. The light engulfs her whole, drawing her like a painting, and that might be the most beautiful scenery Levi has ever seen. He lets his heart calm down, lets his breathing slow down. When he blinks she still hasn’t moved, her green skirt still in her hands, blue embroidery decorating her stomach and breasts. It’s a sight, really, how a soldier that killed more than anyone could become such an elegant and mesmerizing woman. He swallows dry, licking his lips in a vain attempt to wet them.

“Our next client is way beyond the walls, near the sea,” he tells finally. His words get carried away, farther than her ears, where no one will hear. She blinks, still awaiting. He sighs. “Armin wants you to write a letter.” Unmoving, a discreet gasp escapes through her parted lips. He walks towards her, reaches for her, lets his hand hang in the air.

“Let’s go, then,” she smiles, puts her hand in his, lets him lead her away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is from a french book titled "Jeanne" which talks about a young girl living on her own in a treehouse, with a fox by her side. The world portrayed is idesolated and fantastic, with a kind of reaper going around endlessly, the wind being represented as a woman with long and wavy hair, and dangerous birds trying to steal away teh fox to transform it into a bird. It's about the transition of childhood to adulthood, its hardships, its desillusions. The imagery is absolutely beautiful. If you get the chance to read it one day, take it. It's such a good story.


	11. La vie en rose

When she deeply thinks about it, she’s felt this way for a while, now.

It might have started way back, before the end of the war was even thought about. The idea of ending a war that lasted for so long was surreal, a single hope way too tangible and precarious to be in anyone’s mind. Fallen comrades were too fresh in everyone’s thoughts and the war was too gory, too bloody, the ideal scenario of finally ending the war was nothing but a mere forgotten hope, too far from the eye to be perceived, a frail and weak flame, burning nothing but air. A candle, malted away into nothingness. Peace was never a thing back then. And Mikasa, having grown in a merciless time of unfairness and fear, never even thought about peace.

But when it had all ended, with no more blood to shed and no more flesh to cut, Mikasa had lost all presence of reality. What would she do now? Her hands were made to kill, not anything else. With everyone now perceiving the flame of hope, they all went their way, building families, discovering and exploring the world they never knew about. Left behind, no dreams to pursue, no one to stay with and no desire to follow again, she had swayed away into the shadow of her past self. A dying horse full of dark memories, the desire to rot away and maybe the trauma of her own reputation, the very one she used to terrify her enemies, that was all she had back then. Peace was never an option, and when it had come, Mikasa hadn’t known what to do with it, so she had rotten away.

And really, she thinks again now, he had been the same, exactly the same, with maybe a bit more experiences in war and a bit more of tragic backstories. He had the same reputation as her, if not deadlier, and he only had known war and misery. He had fought endless monsters, had killed both creatures and humans, had shed more blood than she could ever count. He was the same, exactly the same. He was made to kill, so how did he accept peace with such ease? How? While she had decayed on her own he had decided of a new life, one more respectful, away from violence and corruption. He is better, she comes to a conclusion. He is better than her, not a coward, not a puppet. He had seen the flame of hope a long time ago, way before her, and now that she is by his side, silently following his every step, making his life her own, she sees that she truly has been this way since way before the war. Respecting him, admiring him. Even loving him, it would seem.

“We will take a rest soon, a colony isn’t far from here from what I’ve heard,” his voice cuts through her train of thoughts and she jolts awake, clearing her mind that is the fog of her thoughts. She looks up at him through her bangs and, when he looks down at her, he frowns. “We’ll cut your hair then, you’re in dire need of a trim.”

“I like them long,” she objects, but he just scoffs and turns away, leading his horse with the stature of a general.

“We’ll just cut your bangs, I’m sure you can’t see shit through that,” he says firmly, not without an ounce of malice and mockery in his voice. Mikasa shakes her head, looking away from him, blowing at the hair that covers her nose. She really needs it to be cut, she thinks. “And I’ll braid it,” he simply tells. She looks up again, a look of surprise covering her features. He doesn’t look at her and she wonders if he even said anything. But when a grimace forms on his face, throwing her a glare, she smirks. “What?”

“You know how to braid?” He only nods, not bothering to form any kind of words to throw her way, and she guesses that staying silent and not pushing the issue would be fore the best. It is a conversation she will bring back again, but not now. So she simply exhales loudly, nodding to herself, before falling back into silence.

When she wonders a bit more, she might have fallen for him more when he went to take her away from this miserable and pathetic life she had built for herself. It’s strange to say the least, how easily she has made him a new part of her life. His snarky comments, his out of place remarks, his crude vocabulary and his glares harder than steel, but also his new and unfamiliar smiles, somewhat hesitant but there, his fond eyes and his silent attention. The precise movements of his hands when holding a pen, the careful words spoken when talking to a client, the confident steps he takes every time they go out. She pays attention to it all and she became familiar to it, making it a part of his being. She describes him not as a barbaric and heartless man anymore but as one that found redemption, one that became softer while still being the same. It’s better, she thinks, it suits him well. When she looks up he doesn’t look down at her, and it is sufficient. She doesn’t need him to reciprocate any of her feelings, she just needs him to lead and accompany her in this new life he gave her.

A gush of wind takes her breath away. It makes her tired, makes her stumble, but she limps back on track and keeps on following him. She looks at the horse, looks at Levi, both standing still and strong against the wind. She looks down at herself, watching her legs, her arms, the way her muscles have disappeared bit by bit with time. She has taken some weight, has gained some curves, making her more of a woman than a soldier, and she should think of herself a weak but she doesn’t. The wind might be strong, throwing new leaves and colored petals her way, but she stays strong, too, in her own new way. She takes her steps with confidence, following the steady steps of the horse, looking around at the new landscapes.

It is all new, all drawn with a color she’s never seen before, a soft pink she never saw on dresses and skirts, on hair and eyes. It’s a kind of pastel, she thinks, but it’s sweeter, softer, she could almost breathe the floral scent it gives. Fields of flowers, bright with the sun, surround them, the buzzing of bees accompanying the color and the smell, painting a portrait of nature she never saw in this first quarter of her life. She admires it, takes it all in, the way the wind makes everything move in a regular and slow pattern, the way soft greens, blues, yellows and browns pierce through the pink, the way trees tilt without falling, the way birds and nameless insects buzz and fly around them, creating a ballet she never dreamed of. She feels young, younger than she already is, refreshed and renewed, and for a short second, shorter than a blink, she sees a lone cabin made of silver birch wood, with wide windows and embroidered curtains, a place where she imagines herself staying quietly, growing maybe with a family of her own. She sees herself standing there, letting the wind blow her cloths, letting petals fall on her braided hair and shorter fringe. She doesn’t see children, she doesn’t see herself having any child of her own. She blinks, the mirage fading away. She blinks again, looking far ahead at the horizon. Thinking about it a bit more, she doesn’t see herself settling down somewhere, and maybe it’s because Levi told her so, but she doesn’t see a life outside of this one where she would finally settle down quietly. She sees herself traveling around, writing away people’s thoughts and pain happiness. She doesn’t know exactly when she accepted such a life, but she doesn’t complain.

She blinks again and again until a colony appears. It’s tents and wooden houses, farms and fields full of crops and animals, people enjoying the warm day and children playing outside. Women bringing back clear water from the river, men shearing sheep and feeding cows, dogs barking away the hungry birds flying around plantations of rice and trees full of fresh fruits. Levi climb down from the horse and walks slowly, settling at a calm pace by her side. When she looks his way he looks back.

“We’ll stop here for the night. We’ll leave tomorrow,” he calmly tells her. She tilts her head, looking at him with skepticism.

“How are you sure they’ll accept us?” Nodding her head towards the colony, she continues, “they might not want us to settle in. From what I’ve heard, some colonies don’t accept strangers.”

“Mikasa,” they’re closer to the colony, enough to recognize the faces of the people living there, and when familiar eyes cross hers, she stops, gasping silently, “we’re not strangers here.”

“Mikasa!” A hand waves, a bald head bobs, a smiles brighter than the sun shines her way, and a small man runs towards the both of them. A small smiles creeps on her face and, as her eyes squint, she says back.

“Connie?” The small man runs and runs until he cannot breathe anymore, and yet this familiar smile is still beaming her way. He goes to hug her, letting his arms round her back.

“God, I thought you were dead ore something, how come you never visited?” He doesn’t let her breathe her answer, leading her towards the center of the colony with enthusiastic hands. He seems full of energy, letting his loud voice echo around. “And you brought the captain at that!” Once again she goes to talk but he shoves her inside a small wooden house with empty windows, white sheets covering them from the bugs flying around. He makes her sit on a wooden bench in the middle of the room, quickly gives her a glass of water. He does the same to Levi though a bit more hesitant, letting him sit on his own, only bringing him the glass. He nods his thanks and Connie goes to sit in front of them, on a cut yet clean tree trunk. “I’m so happy to see you, you know. I really thought I would never see you again. After the war, we all separated. Jean found someone, I know that for sure, he bragged about it for almost two years by letters. He even has a child now, isn’t that a miracle? But he’s changed, he’s a new man. He’s more responsible and calmer, maybe. He matured, just like any of us.” He gulps his water down and seems to quiet down, breathing slowly. Mikasa drinks her water slowly, letting her eyes wonder on the small man in front of her. Connie grew but not by much, his head is shaved clean of this strange buzz cut he had for so long, and maybe he seems more tired, something heaving on his shoulders, something he never got rid of. She can easily guess what it is. “Where were you? We were all worried we would never see you again, after a year, maybe more or less, I thought you were dead, that despite you being the strongest of us, the war had been too much. I should have known you were stronger than that.” He looks at her with such trusting eyes, Mikasa looks down at her empty glass. When he leans towards her to fill it again, she simply nods her thanks.

“I really wasn’t, Connie,” the smaller man nods, seemingly understanding, and he doesn’t push the issue farther. Instead he turns towards Levi and, tilting his head, he begins to talk to him, asking him billions of questions. Levi doesn’t seem annoyed, answering the questions with longer sentences and more precise words, his voice always steady and assured.

Mikasa leans back against the bench, letting her head fall back. The water she drinks slides down her tongue, fresh as snow, and she doesn’t swallow it, letting it warm up in her mouth, gurgling it. Bubble form at the back of her throat and, when she really thinks about it, alone with her thoughts, she finally sees how everyone has changed, how nothing really is the same anymore.

She gulps the water down, warmness uncomfortable in her mouth, and looks back up at the two familiar men. They’re still talking and, sighing, she smiles, letting her chin fall in the hollow of her palm and her elbow digging in her thigh. She feels calm, with their steady voices, the buzzing of the bugs and the chirping of the birds, the sweet taste of spring, the exquisite smell of fresh flowers and the clear memory of sweet pink in her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone knows where 'La Vie En Rose' comes from, but did you know that Audrey Hepburn, a great actress and the most beautiful woman in the world in my opinion, sang it for a movie? (Well, kind of, she had a soft voice that got doubled in the end). The scene is so relaxing, just watch it and you'll feel calm and serene in a second. Magic.


	12. Couper l'attention

Snip. Snap. Snip. Snap. Snip. Snap. Snip. Snap. Snip. Snap.

The repetitive and regular sound of the scissors cutting around her ears and behind her head makes her doze off. She feels sleepy, and when her head bobs from side to side, Levi is here with careful hands to make her steady again. He complains from time to time, slaps the back of her head sternly but softly, lets his fingers wander against her scalp. It always wakes her up, even for just ten minutes or so, and she always pays close attention to where the scissors cut, where his fingers wander. She feels the cold steel of the blades behind the ears, above her nape, against her skin. The prick, sometimes, of the tips, the cut of untrained movements, of swift motions that lack precision. She hear shim curse from time to time, feels him tense and move when he doesn’t know where to cut anymore, when he cannot make bangs the same length. She never chuckles, keeps all of her sounds to herself, even when Connie sometimes enter the room and asks them if they need anything, if they want help or just to make small talks, the ones he used to like but couldn’t do anymore, not without any of his old friends by his side. Only Levi talks then, leaving Mikasa to dose off again, eyes heavy with the smell of new spring, the warmth of the early afternoon or the repetitive and regular sound of the scissors, cutting around her ears, behind her head.

When she feels her head tipping again, she forces her eyes open. Everything is blurry for a moment, fresh tears still hanging at the edge of her eyes and yawn about to escape from in between her lips. Levi seems quiet, one of his hands holding the scissors carefully, his other traveling around her right ear, searching for longer bangs. The scissors stroke the tip of her ear, cutting shorter hairs that wouldn’t cooperate with Levi. The man blows her way, making small strands float and cut parts fall on her shoulder. He strokes them away and Mikasa sees them cascade down her breasts, settling on her lap. He takes small strands and cuts again, the regular sound of the scissors coming back. She closes her eyes, lets her thoughts wander, waltzing around her head, never to settle. Only when he cuts the skin at the tip of her ear and a single drop of blood trickles down the cartilage does she open her eyes again, throwing him a side glare. She watches him frown, taking her ear in between his fingers, stroking the small wound.

“It’s nothing,” he reassures her. It isn’t needed, she’s had worse wounds and they both know it, but the desire to apologize and comfort her strangely settles at the pit of his stomach and stays there. He would have named it a virus were it not for the warmness that it spreads and the tender feelings that it delivers deep inside him. He lets go of her ear, watches the wound already closing. He cleans the thin trail the single drop has left and, right in between his thumb and his index, he takes her lobe and stays there. “You can close your eyes again. I’ll just slap you again when you fall on me.”

“How kind,” she answers with a low voice, barely above a whisper. there’s no malice, only the slight undertone of sarcasm, just the right amount. She doesn’t move as she feels him stroking her ear lobe, waiting for a word, a movement, any kind of sign. But after a minute he remains still by her side, tip of the blades still against her scalp, right where they were supposed to cut. She stares at him then, tilting her head ever so slightly. “Levi?”

He isn’t watching her, but her lips, she sees. With narrowed eyes and a new concentration she’s only seen on him when about to cut, right above the nape, arms readied above his head and behind his back, blades strongly held. It holds the same attention, the same look exactly, the one of a hero about to kill, the one so many people used to fear and admire at the same time. It is dangerous, she thinks as her heart begins to accelerate deep in her chest. He leans ever so slightly, lets his head tilt for a second.

Anticipation grows, she isn’t stupid, naive or ignorant, she’s seen those eyes countless of times, between trainees, soldiers, citizens, even between her parents when they thought she wasn’t there to witness their own kind of love, the one she used to not understand. It burns, she thinks, as she is finally under those eyes. It burns and it gives her a jolt, one she always desired but never had. He leans again, she leans too. His lips part and his breath hits her right on the cheekbone, below her eye. When she looks down at his lips, she wonders if she has the same eyes.

“Can I?” He asks lowly, and it’s a new Levi that speaks, one that might have existed before but that she never witnessed. Maybe for Petra, maybe for another man or woman. Right now, this Levi is for her, and she only nods, scissors forgotten aside, ear lobe let go of. “With your words, Mikasa,” she might as well speak now, never missing a beat.

“You can,” she murmurs against him, words against his own, her breath warming his cheeks.

He leans down, down and down again, letting his left hand settle on her right shoulder, the other on the ground holding his weight. She closes her eyes, watching him slowly do the same. When she feels his lips against hers, his breath stopping along hers, she wonders if everyone that had those eyes always felt the same. A strange, new and yet appealing warmth deep in the chest, a certain palpitation, faster but soft, a new kind of feeling, one of excitement and yet calming. Quiet thoughts, nonexistent breathing. It’s new but there, right in between her breasts where her heart beats, and it spreads and spreads. If she were to describe it it would be like a fire in early autumn, warmness over a tender night, almost too hot but familiar. The beginning of the cold days and the end of the warm ones. When he pulls away the fire is still there, right in her chest and on her lips. She doesn’t open her eyes and only feels his hands on her, his left hand settling on her neck, his right one taking the scissors. He takes small strands of hair, cuts again, and the repetitive and regular sound of the scissors comes back.

She might have fallen asleep, she guesses, for when she opens her eyes again the sun has set and the crickets in the fields lowly sing for the night. She reaches for her hair, letting her fingers move through her new haircut. When she stands up a blanket falls off her lap. She neatly folds it before putting it back on the ground where she laid seconds ago. She walks around the corridors, searching for a mirror. She finds one against a wall, randomly hanging sideways. Connie never took care of his things, and she guesses he hasn’t changed since then. She ignores the desire to put it back correctly and simply looks at her reflection with tired and heavy eyes.

Her bangs are shorter, way shorter than before. They remind her of her old self, the one she was right before the end of the war. The bangs frame her face perfectly, letting her face seem rounder and younger only if for a few years. In the back, her hair is short, stopping right at the start of her hairline, and she feels thankful, silently thanking Levi for making her hair short again. She feels stronger this way, more like herself, and she doesn’t look like her mother so much anymore. Despite the bags under her eyes and her small and almond eyes, her thin lips and her clear jawline, she doesn’t see her mother in her own face and traits. Nostalgia settles for a moment but is quickly forgotten as Levi appears behind her.

“Don’t complain now, cutting a sleeping woman’s hair is a real pain in the ass,” he says with a grin, looking at her through the mirror. She never looks away, only smiling softly his way.

“You could have woken me up like you did so many times before,” she whispers. She touches her hair, moves it around, tilts her head right and left, turns and turns some more, all the while looking at him. His grin fades and he nods, but he still looks calm and collected, not an ounce of sadness or remorse in him. For that, Mikasa is grateful again.

“I could have,” he tells simply before looking at her one more time. His hand touches the back of her head, moving stray hairs around before flattening them. He nods to himself. “I always thought this haircut suited you best.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything back then?” She asks softly, turning around to look at him, mirror behind her. She sees his eyes look straight into hers before turning to the mirror, surely watching the back of her head once more.

“It wasn’t the time, wasn’t the place. I was waiting for a better moment, one that suited that type of conversation,” he looks a bit awkward for a moment, crossing his arms on his chest, putting his weight on his right leg. He isn’t looking at her, and she remembers hearing one of the trainees back when she had just become a soldier talking about how awkward and hesitant Levi was in romance. She doesn’t remember the context, doesn’t remember the reason why everything was brought up in the first place, but she strangely remembers those words. “It never really came.”

She nods and understands, and as they both stand there, she wonders if it all came slowly to them, if it were something that had to be. It’s a wonder on its own, how the best soldiers could end up like that, but she doesn’t let her mind remind her of all the people they lost, all the people that could have taken him away, or her own self, maybe.

“We’ll leave in the morning, as soon as the sun rises,” he simply states before turning away, and Mikasa follows again. It leads them to their shared room that Connie gave them for the time of their stay. While Levi lays on his bed, huffing at his body colliding against the mattress, Mikasa simply stands against the door frame.

“Levi?” A moment. He hums. “What do we do now?” A moment. He sits up, she goes to sit on her own bed. They’re centimeters apart, not far from the other, their knees almost touching. Mikasa suddenly feels strangely vulnerable, like another person altogether.

“We do as we please, as long as we both desire it,” he whispers it so slowly and lowly that her heart skips a beat. She leans back, letting her arms take her whole weight. He looks at her with strong and narrowed eyes. “Do you want it, Mikasa?” She nods, feeling her throat closing on her. His eyes narrow some more. “Use your words, Mikasa.” Her name on his tongue might feel like honey, she thinks, and she suddenly realizes that he seems so dominant sitting so confidently in front of her. Their knees bump, her hands sink into the mattress. She swallows dry.

“I want it, Levi,” she clears her throat a little, lets her head fall. He smiles for a moment before laying down, letting his head hit the pillow below him. Mikasa does the same, hiding the shakiness of her hands. She lays down softly, quietly, and as she looks up at the ceiling in the dark room they both silently stay in, she turns her head to him. “Do you want it, Levi?” She uses the same tone, the same dominant feeling he had moments ago, the same honey taste. He looks at her through dark bangs and soft pillow.

A moment. “Yes.” Like liquid sugar, the word drips down his mouth. She tastes it, savors it, lets it sweeten her ears. She smiles, turns around. She sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been binge watching 'Whose Line' episodes and gigs all day, reminds me of another french program that used to air on tv when I was younger. I loved it so much. It wasn't improv but it was so great. Sometimes I miss being younger. I'm not that old but I feel old already, it's kind of annoying. I don't think I really want to get older than thirty or fourty, but at the same time I don't really want to die.  
Anyway, my non-existent abs hurt because I've been laughing way too much for it to be healthy.  
And romance is here! It's getting sweet and soft, I'm not used to writing fluff like this, but it's good sometimes to write sweet moments.


	13. Là où le soleil se noie

The sun seems pink, from where she stands. A pink orb with a red hue, purple undertones and maybe a bit of orange surrounding it. It seems warm yet it only gives coldness, the coldness of the early morning. There’s no cloud hiding it, no wind blowing it away, and only the time passing by makes it change colors from a deep and aesthetically pleasing girlish pallet to a warmer yellowish tone, one that resembles summer more, one that inspires reassurance and the joy of laziness, one that spreads warmth all throughout the land.

Mikasa likes the pink sun better, though. The surreal lights paint the landscape with a new and beautiful color, dawn has always been her favorite moment to witness. Not because of its meaning, the beginning of a new day, the birth of a new chance, Mikasa’s never really cared for that, but more because of the imagery of such a beautiful time, as the sun rises high, the colors shifting from a dark pallet made of dark blues and heavy black to warm and soft pinks, purples and reds, with the company of pastel oranges. It’s always those shades that Mikasa likes best and looks up to every morning. It always warms her eyes and makes them shine like gems never discovered before, and Mikasa likes it the most. She believes dawn brings out the best in people, tiredness fading away but still present enough to prevent the human mind from thinking too much about too many things. Evil exists, but never at dawn.

“You can take the horse if you get tired, you know. You’re quite slow today.”

It’s his deep voice that breaks the serendipity of dawn. She sighs for a short moment, the warmth of dawn leaving her, but his own kind of warmth replaces it quickly, and she finds herself unable to be mad at his intervention. She simply lowers her eyes from the splendid sky to his impassive face. When she shakes her head without looking away from him, a small smile forms on his face.

“Use your words, Mikasa,” she sighs again, but not out of annoyance. Out of something else, really, something she can’t quite pinpoint.

“I don’t need the horse. I can walk just fine,” she simply says after him, quite quickly, hurrying her words. He shrugs then, turning back around to face the still dark horizon and for a moment, Mikasa doesn’t think he’ll say anything else, but when he simply proposes her to ask him of she needs the horse during their travel, she smiles sweetly, nodding without answering. She’s asked to use her words again, and she doesn’t complain. “I will,” she simply answers back.

She walks faster after that. Not too fast, not fast enough to get tired quickly anyway, but fast enough to follow the steps of the horse from some meters away. This way, she sees Levi’s back from far enough for it to be surrounded by the horizon, slowly brightening his frame. She’s content with such a sight, and though they haven’t spoken about yesterday’s events, she knows he thinks about it too, if not for the way he throws discreet glances every now and then from above his shoulder. She smiles a little every time, the action being the only reassurance she needed in order to know that they didn’t make a mistake. But after some time, maybe hours judging by the way the pastel pallet has faded away and the sun has risen above them, he stopped looking back, and Mikasa stops looking at him. Instead, she looks up at the sky, around at the landscape.

The world has flatten, she sees. There’s no bumps and mountains around, no giant trees and fields of crops, no ruins and buildings. She doesn’t hear the sound of grass being walked on but the sound of sand being disturbed under her boots, the sound of birds she’s never heard before, a loud cry, high and shaky ending in low tones, and if she tries to hear it better, it sounds maybe like a laugh, a mocking and vicious one, and if she were to guess, the bird would be fast, lean and thin, black and malicious. It would fly above the ground in search for a prey, a cadaver maybe, flesh to be fetched and blood to be drained. After a time she stops thinking about the seemingly evil birds and looks around instead, at the scenery surrounding her. The sun has lowered down enough for the sky to be darker than minutes ago, and she guesses the time to be around early evening, late afternoon maybe. Thinking about those unseen birds has made her lose track of time, and she begins to feel thankful for that. Walking for so long gets tiring, and she has too much pride ot ask for the horse, despite Levi being adamant that she could ask for it at any time. It isn’t hers, hers is dead, rotten away on the porch of her cabin in the woods, far away from the sea. She doesn’t deserve a horse, let alone one that is Levi’s.

“Armin should be waiting for us,” Levi, once again, breaks through her train of thoughts. It resonates above the unseen birds’ cries right to her attentive ears. He turns around, offers her a small nod. She nods back.

“Is he alone?”

“He has a small colony by his side, some curious minds in search of more knowledge about the sea and its inhabitants. Fishermen and their wives, scientists, widows seeking a new scenery, you know. The sea attracted a lot of people once peace was clear. From what I’ve heard, they’ve become quite the village, almost as big as a city, but Armin hasn’t said anything about those rumors when he asked us to meet him.

“I guess that’s good news. Arming shouldn’t be alone,” she sighs, relief flooding her like the sea’s scent flooding her nostrils. When she blinks up at Levi, he looks at her with an unreadable expression, one where his eyebrows are furrowed and his lips are pursed. She watches as his eyes narrow down to small lines before widening back to their normal size. Under the dim light of the tired sun, they shine less.

“He wouldn’t like that, you know,” he says with a strangely heavy voice. When Mikasa awaits for him to continue, he turns around, leading the horse back on track. “The letter he sent to you, he wasn’t asking for your protection but more for your company. Don’t treat him as a child, he’s grown, he’s led a colony on his own. And he was alone in that. Not a friend by his side, they all settled near the walls, or at least halfway between the big cities and the sea. He was alone through everything. He doesn’t need you anymore, Mikasa,” she swallows the lump that’s taken over her throat, coughing discreetly in her tight fist, eyes downcasted at the sand that crunches under her boots. “I doubt he’s ever needed you in any way.”

After that, silence takes over them. Only the sand being moved around and the awful cries of the strange birds litter the surroundings. When Mikasa looks up at the birds, she finally sees them for what they are; scrawny, frail-looking and stupidly goofy birds, white and gray feathers floating with the wind, long beaks opening each and every time they cry. She finds herself hating those birds and their cries. Maybe the sea isn’t the scenery she was looking for, in the end. And she’s always been scared of drowning, anyway.

When Levi stops in his tracks, Mikasa finally looks down. Facing them, reflecting the sleeping sun, a large body of dark yet shimmering water welcomes her tired and heavy eyes. Stars seem to glitter in the water and the sleeping sun gives the dark blue water orange hues, flaming red. She’s never seen such a large body of water, so vast and deep, going so far it would seem to turn around and fall down the sky to nowhere in particular. She imagines large waterfalls dripping down the side of the Earth, imagines the water falling down space, never to be seen again. She fears that the boats would fall off the edge of Earth, too. Or maybe Earth is round, maybe the water travels around and comes back, only to repeat the same cycle every single hour of the day. Mikasa wonders and wonders, eyes glimmering under the light that escapes from the deep waters. When she feels eyes on her, burning through her skin, she looks up at Levi and finds his gaze solely on her, watching her with a fond expression, strangely soft and nice.

“It’s the first time you see the sea, right?” He asks slowly, lowly, and his voice seems to reflect the sound of the waves hitting the shore. It’s smooth and calm, soothing even.

“I’ve seen it before, but I was too scared to ask anything, not curious enough. And it was at day, we had too many worries at the time,” she answers back, not daring to make her voice go higher than that. She looks deep in his eyes, they glimmer more now. She sees the stars that shine deep in the waters. “I want to know more now. I’ll ask Arming when we meet.” She takes a step forward, getting closer to Levi and his horse. The man jumps down the animal, landing smoothly. His ankle doesn’t hurt anymore, she sees, and it’s been five years and more, why would it hurt again? It’s been a long time, she missed many things. She wonders, for a moment, how Armin will look like once they finally meet again. “Is there anyone else we know?”

“Not that I recall of,” he merely answers, side-eyeing her carefully, analyzing her expressions, but when she doesn’t move a muscle at that, he simply nods and lightly taps the horse on his back. The animal resumes walking, and so do they.

The nearer they get to the water, the louder the waves get. It soon becomes almost deafening, how the water hits with precise repetition the sand, leaving behind strangely shaped seaweeds and smaller animals. Mikasa thinks she can see a crab limping the beach, until the dark shape gets taken away by the salty water. It’s the repetitive and familiar movements that soothe Mikasa’s mind, that quiet her worries and, soon, she finds herself in a bizarre and unfamiliar stance, walking along the beach, her boots taken off, her toes digging into soft pale sand and hitting small round rocks. They’ve been softened, shaped and reshaped by water again and again, and she wonders of some of those rocks are older than her, if they’ve ever seen the war or if they’d stayed under the water until some time ago, when a bigger and stronger wave had moved them to where they are now. It’s wonderful, really, how the sea can make her think and imagine so innocently. For a moment, she thinks of settling here, right at the edge of the white sand, where no scream could be heard and where water could wash away all of her worries and dark thoughts, and maybe she would live alone, maybe she would live with someone by her side.

She smiles softly when she feels a small rock dig into the sole of her feet and looks up. In front of her, where the sand stops and where the hill, that has been dug up by waves and time, starts, lights are visible. She can hear laughter and vivid discussions, can see lights waltzing around the sky all along the hill. She can see the top of wooden cabins and tents, and when she strains her eyes a little, squinting as much as she can, she can see figures, small silhouettes, running along the hill down to the beach. The nearer they get, the clearer they seem, and when she looks at Levi, he simply nods towards the smaller figures. It’s children, she soon realizes, that have come to great them.

“We’ve got visitors, we’ve got visitors!” one of them yells.

“They’ve come from the sea, they’re bringing gooder than good news!” another yells back, and as they run, more and more children come, yelling more than welcoming words. It must have been a rare sight to witness, visitors, right where the world stops and the sea begins.

“Let’s show the adults, we’ve got a mermaid now, right?” And more and more words fly by as the taller children run around them, torches in hand, and as the smaller kids watch from afar, curiously analyzing how a mermaid can walk on legs when it is supposed to live deep in the sea.

“They’ve read books, Mikasa,” Levi whispers by her ear, a small smile playing on his features, “you know we’re at the right place,” she nods back at him, letting the children leading her towards the settlement. It’s strange to hear that so many young children knew how to read and surely how to write, when she only learned a couple of months ago, lesser than that. Nonetheless, she finds it admirable, how Armin succeeded in imposing education when it wasn’t even a problem when they were children themselves.

They climb and climb again, following the children, and as they near the village, the lights become clearer, brighter, almost blinding against the dark night. Mikasa looks up where the sun is no more, where the stars don’t show on the water anymore for there is no light to reflect, and where the waves seem to have settled down, quieted to just a mere whisper of the sea. Maybe it’s the distance, maybe it’s just a creation of her own mind, but the quietness unsettles as much as it relaxes her.

She feels a soft nudge against her rib cage and, looking down from the horizon, she sees Levi nodding towards someone in front of them. She follows his sight.

Facing them with a gentle smile and welcoming eyes shaped like the most beautiful of crescents, Armin waves softly, just like the sea. Mikasa finds solace in seeing him again, her heart slows down to the simplest of beat. When they get closer the smaller man opens his arms, and Mikasa engulfs herself deep in them.

She laughs when she realizes he smells just like the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's a soap opera, though? It's everywhere and I don't know what it is, I just see really good singers slipping around because the stage is too clean, and I feel really stupid.  
Also, don't kill me, but I've been really into BTS since the last few months, and I've started written a fic, but again, I don't think I'm gonna finish it...


	14. La mer était à boire

The ocean seems like a cruelly beautiful place. The smell of fresh air and salty water, the divers aromas of bitterness and sweetness, the feeling of freedom and loneliness, the mesmerizing and dangerous view, high up on the highest cliff, right above the ocean itself, with the biggest waves Mikasa could imagine hitting the shore and biting at the rocks, the walls that hold the village up there. The ocean is cruel, it would seem, with the carcasses of many animals floating away or being thrown on shore, and the mysteries it holds deep in its water, the wonders of the abyss and the lives it hides. Armin tells her of all the creatures they thought they saw, such as fish that could crush the tallest of buildings, ones with teeth that could tear away every limb your body has or empty you of all of your blood, creatures that swim, that breathe underwater, others that cannot and Mikasa wonders, why would creatures go through all of this to live a life where they cannot breathe? Mikasa wonders and asks and curiosity takes the best in her, as she cannot for the life of her understand the many wonders of the sea, of the ocean itself and everything it ever had.

Would there be creatures taller than the titans they had to fight in order to survive? Would they end up being swallowed if they were to swim farther than possible? Would she drown if she were to ever put her head underwater for too long, or would she swim away like the strange creatures that cannot breathe yet still live their life underwater? All those questions that Armins tries to answer. Armin knows best, knows many things, he’s read books and seen it all, he thinks, the ocean cannot hide that many things in its waters. The giant creatures that swim and float and spit water, he calls them whales, but there are so many different species, what shall he call them, then? And the waters, where do they come from, where do they go? Do they fall off the edge of Earth, or is Earth round, oval, a shape where water never goes away? Mikasa wonders then, as Armin tells her so much that she cannot hear it all, if she had traveled more than the waters she fears or if waters had traveled more than herself. Would she travel more, then, if she were to throw herself in the water?

“And then, we saw it, the most gigantic of tails, sharp on the edges and yet so smoothly hitting the water. Almost no droplets were lost, almost no water was bothered, it was like it had gone right through, without touching it. I think their bodies is slim but firm, surely strong for such a beast, it’s incredible Mikasa, I had never seen such a thing,” Armin tells her of his discoveries, of his experiences and anecdotes, and Mikasa finds herself nodding as she listens to his every tale. She wonders then if Armin really saw it all or if the war had dented his vision of life forever. He seems tired, too.

“Would it have eaten you, you think?” he truly feels drawn to these stories, finds herself curious about everything he tells her, with his voice never wavering and his eyes never leaving hers, surely drinking her reactions. She tries to be more expressive than she used to, and it seems to please him so much that she finds herself exaggerating much more than she would have liked.

“I don’t think so, it didn’t even spare a glance our way. Maybe it eats smaller creatures than itself but biggest than us. I cannot think for the life of me that a creature this size could not eat meat, don’t you think so too?” She sees the child in him, the one that would always appear each and every time they would talk about fascinating matters and estranged subjects, but she also sees a man, one that went through hell and back for a piece of peace and quiet, that observed misery at its highest and humanity at its worst low. She wonders then, too, if all those questions he keeps asking himself are a way to cope with the thoughts that must plague him at night.

“I think so too, Armin,” he nods at her and she smiles a little, observes the shine in his eyes, the way his blue orbs never get darkened by anything. She thinks of gems she’s never seen before, and surely out there, there has to be a gem as blue and bright as the eyes facing her.

After a moment of silence where both of them think but never speak, Levi enters smoothly and quietly through the closed door of the cabin, pen, bottle of ink and paper in hand. He nods at Armin before sitting by Mikasa’s side, and though he doesn’t look her way, the simple brush of his shoulder against hers greets her in a sweet and romantic way. She looks down at his hands, at the way he holds the pen, the way he spins it between his fingers. They seem calloused, if not battered.

“Oh, yes, the letter,” Armin seems to remember and suddenly, he straightens his posture and takes on a more serious expression. His eyes lose their glitter, and the precious gems Mikasa saw before transform into simple stones, ones she used to see so much back then, before peace was even an idea crossing their minds late at night. It reminds her of early conversations, unfinished meals, dead horses and lone screams. She doesn’t shudder, she strangely feels accustomed with those things despite the five years of loneliness she went through.

“Just tell us what goes through your mind, Armin, and we’ll simply write it down. If you want to go back, we’ll use another page. Regret is a common thing everyone deals with, understood?” Levi tells him with a stony voice, but Armin isn’t intimidated by his presence anymore, and he simply nods as he lets his elbows rest on his knees.

Levi gives her the pen, the ink, glides the paper towards her, before settling back in the couch and nodding at the both of them. Mikasa straightens her back, takes the pen carefully between her fingers, and as she wets the tip of the pen right in the ink, she flattens the white paper against the wooden table surface. When she moves the pen towards the page, tip flattening against the paper, separating in two equal parts, and when the ink begins to flow down the steely tip, going through the lines and curves carved on the material, she looks up at Armin quickly, softly nodding at him to talk.

“I’ve never seen you write before, Mikasa,” he whispers her way and finally, she sees the intimate place they are all in. It isn’t a simple client but someone she knows, someone whose words will hit close to home, whose words she will drink up as much as she will write down. When she looks up again, he’s sporting a soft expression, no surprise on his traits. He simply seems curious and strangely positive at her holding the pen.

“Levi taught me,” she looks down, a small puddle of ink has formed on the page. From there, she curves her letters, rolls her wrist and moves her shoulder to carve Armin’s name onto the page, putting extra effort in the small curves, the lines, the dotes. It’s prettied and cleaner than she’s ever written, and as she concentrates on the letters and the black ink that flows down, she misses Armin’s knowing look thrown her way, his eyes following the distance between her and the old corporal. After a second, she looks up again, and Armin simply nods.

“So, I don’t really know how to start, shall I speak formally for that?” When she shakes her head, he sighs, “good, because I’ve only done that for the past years, and it gets so tiring.” Mikasa doesn’t write any of that, waits for his actual stories. She doesn’t know what he will speak about. Maybe the coean, maybe the colony, the creatures and the wonders of the sea, the times of peace and the memories stuck in the back of his head, where he cannot reach and so cannot forget. Those are the worst, they both know that. “I’ve been the ehad of this village for almost four years now. I took my time taking back what I lost during the war. My books, my cloths, I didn’t have many of those, only maybe a box or two. Books were burned for their words and cloths were expensive and during the war, you neither want to lose matches nor money. So I recollected it all, in one simple box, and went my way. You had disappeared by the time I had collected it all, and at the time, I truly had thought you had given up after everything. You were a monster, Mikasa, a weapon no one could protect themselves from. Killing everything in your way takes a toll on you, and I truly had thought that it had finally caught up to you,;” a time, she doesn’t write it down, let’s the pen hover above the page. No words need to be written, its’ a common knowledge what war does on a person. “With no one in sight, I thought about going to the ocean, farther than where we’ve gone before. Way farther, where no land could reach, where no one could find me. But I found myself being surrounded by curious souls and adventurous characters. Children and elders alike, they all wanted to discover the depth of the world, where only water could be seen, where the horizon was always blue and clear. Where mysteries needed to be discovered for them to not be mysteries anymore. We traveled for so long, longer than ever before. We lost some, we gained some, some were born right in the wilderness and oh, how strange I thought at the time that some new souls would never know what war felt like. But I was glad to know that thanks to our battles, thanks to what we all went through, war would never be a problem anymore, and that knowledge would now be a part of everyone’s education.” He smiles at that, and when Mikasa looks up, she observes the many books, newer than others, that seem to have been bought or written recently. They all a name on it, carved in golden letters, and when she reads his name on the edge, she looks at him. He seems proud of what he’s done, though tiredness has overcome his old joy.

“Are you happy now?” Levi interrupts the small silence that had settled between them, and when Mikasa looks up at him, she sees the same tiredness in his eyes, the same proud but exhausted look. They both built this world, both created a new life after that, but both seem to still hold grudges and nightmares of those times they all wish to forget. Mikasa, when she looks down at the lines she’s written and the curves she’s drawn, feels more selfish than ever. “This thing you created, this place you hold and this importance you have in those people’s lives, are you happy and satisfied with it?”

Armin doesn’t answer for a moment, and silence once again overcomes them. Mikasa deeps the tip of the pen in the bottle of ink, watches the drops fall from the steel, staining the table with the splashes it creates. When she looks up, pen firmly held between her fingers, she sees Armin looking out through the only window of the room, where he observes the ocean he’s dreamed of for so long with a strange melancholic look. When she looks at it too, she hears the waves with so much clarity that she could see herself right by the shore. She closes her eyes for a second, imagines her toes digging in the sand, the waves licking at her naked ankles, the salty wind biting at her skin, the specific and unique smell of the ocean overwhelming all of her senses, the sun hitting and warming up her skin. She hears the water, hears the seagulls. It strangely feels serene, a distinct sense of belonging and tranquility she’s never felt before taking over her own tiredness.

When she opens her eyes, there’s an ink stain right by her page, and she cleans it with the back of her hand. The paper is clean, that’s all that matters.

“I wouldn’t say I am, happy I mean,” Armin speaks again and for the first time since they’ve arrived, Armin seems to truly open up to them. The chief of the colony seems older than he is young, and Armin isn’t the same as he used to be, Mikasa sees. She writes everything he says down now, his thoughts more important than mere facts. She just puts a little bit of poetics in her words, so that his thoughts aren’t as harsh to read or to accept. “I am satisfied, I am sure of that. Everything I’ve dreamed of, I finally achieved it. I went to the ocean, I discovered what books used to tell but with so much more details, I wrote my own books, so that everyone can keep a trace of what’s been hidden from us for so long. I settled near the sea, I have friends by my side, I’ve made people trust me, listen to me, I’ve battled my weaknesses to become a stronger being, I have everything now, everything I’ve ever wanted, and yet...” He seems to think of his words, turning them in his mouth, testing them with his tongue. He searches and thinks. “And yet, I feel so tired. There’s pressure on my shoulders that there wasn’t before. Fighting a war seems easier than living a whole new life. I feel envy towards the newborns that will never know what war feels like. I feel envy towards the families that got to live through, that got to have the things I never had. As a role model, I shouldn’t think this way. I’m smart, I’m strong, and I overcame the doubts I had. All those people, they look up at me, they listen to my words almost religiously, because I gave them what they never had, but sometimes it feels like my dreams were transformed into some kind of obligations. I had to show them the outside world. I had to. I wanted to travel all around the territories I would come across before finally settling near the sea at an old age, but because I didn’t go alone, I had to settle here without knowing more. I envy them but at the same time, I sometimes find myself hating them for taking my dreams away. And I feel like a monster for that.” He sighs then, hiding his hands between his thighs, and there she sees him, the old Armin, the younger one, with dreams on his minds and wonder in his eyes. He seems trapped in the body of an older Armin, one with responsibilities that he cannot run away from. The chief of the village, the one that brought all those people together, cannot give up on what he’s built for his own childhood dreams. And when Mikasa looks down at her words, they translate those thoughts exactly. Armin has remorse, and he cannot do anything about that.

“I regret everything so much,” he whispers. When she writes it down, she finds the curves of her own letters horrendous, too sharp and too small. “I regret, but I am satisfied.” She writes it down too. It still feels wrong, the letters are still too small compared to the words they tell.

A time passes by, a second too long and a minute too quiet. He doesn’t look at neither of them, and Levi stays quiet and unmoving by her side, the only warmth she can feel from him being his shoulder against hers. When Armin doesn’t say anything, she simply signs the letter with a polite expression and his name.

“For whom shall I send it to?” She asks then, her voice just above a whisper. Armin thinks but quickly comes to a decision.

“Send it to Eren,” he says. So simply that Mikasa doesn’t comprehend it immediately, but when the words finally hit her, it seems to hurt in a way that’s been so awaited for.

“He’s disappeared, Armin. He isn’t here anymore,” Levi finally says, and the strain in his words reflect Mikasa’s very thoughts.

“I know, but he has a tomb in the city, no? He must have a memorial at least.” Levi nods then, and Mikasa tastes bitterness on her tongue. He’s never told her that, she didn’t know.

“We’ll send it to him then,” Levi says, and looks expectantly at Mikasa. She signs again, writes Eren’s full name on the envelop. When she gives it to Levi, he quickly puts it in a bag by his side. He goes to leave then, Mikasa taking the bottle of ink and the pen, but Armin stops them both. He seems sure of himself, almost determined. His eyes glimmer in a way they’ve never had before, and Mikasa finds herself stuck deep in them.

“Mikasa, Levi, stay here,” he says. His voice resonates, hits the walls before being swallowed by the waves. “Settle here with me for a time and then let’s leave and explore the world together. Eren had promised me, but he isn’t here anymore, and I want to know what this world is made of. So stay,” his voice gets weaker, loses some of its assurance. “Please.”

Mikasa is at a loss for words. When she looks at Levi, he seems lost, too, deep in thoughts. He looks at her, then, with fond yet narrowed eyes. She sees then that the choice is on her, he isn’t the one that lost five years of his life rotting away. He’ll follow her, he had said, and he’s showing it to her right now. But the pressure is put on her then, and she has to chose for the both of them.

Her heart beats so much faster than before. Mikasa hesitates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I've written this chapter a long time after the others, so I might have made mistakes regarding the story, the setting, and teh overall atmosphere. And many more...   
Also, I would like to apologize to the people subscribed to this story, you might have received a lot of e-mails because of me publishing all the chapters all at once. I'm really sorry.
> 
> I don't know when I'll be able to write again, when I'll be able to buy a new computer, so it's a goodbye for now. See you later!
> 
> Should they stay or should they leave?

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo heyo, how's it going?
> 
> It's been ages since I've written anything and honsetly, this fic has been in my documents for I don't know how long, so I decided to finally post it. Like the tags say, it's a Violet Evergarden inspired AU, but canon compliant, but with an alternative ending, but- Anyway, it's what it is. I wanted to read one of these for so long but I didn't find any, so I wrote it. Might have been a mistake, I haven't finished it yet and don't have the time to write anymore. We'll see where it leads us. For now, twelve chapters have been written. It's far from finished, and it's really, really slow. Meh.
> 
> As always, I apologize for any mistakes and plot holes if there is any. I'm not a professional, I'm just a student with too much time in their hands (well, used to).
> 
> I don't know when I'll post, but compared to my other works, it's not gonna be regular.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading! I'll see you in the next update, if I'm not dead by now. Love you!  
Sur-ce, see ya!


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